


The Magician's Gifts

by RurouniHime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Auror Harry, Cute Kids, Draco in trouble, Emotional Infidelity, Enemies to Friends, F/M, HD World Cup, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Harry's heart is in the right place, Harry-centric, Illegal Activities, M/M, Ministry of Magic, Persecution, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Tarot Challenge, Wizarding Law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:51:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry's crisis is only the beginning of his journey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ace of Pentacles

**Author's Note:**

> This was first written for the HD World Cup in 2008. I was part of Team Canon, and the challenge was The Magician card.
> 
> I wanted to get this one up here at AO3 with the rest. Honestly, I haven't read it in a long while, so the tags may be a little off. I haven't looked at it in terms of editing since I finalized the original either; please forgive any mistakes. 
> 
> Not a sad ending, but not necessarily a happy one either.

_Hold this, then, my son, in both hands. There is the Ace of Pentacles. Many receive this card, but this one, here, now, is yours. Your weight is heaviest here, your stability strong. Your feet hold fast and sure before stepping forward, for you have a path that needs walking._

 

The first time Harry Potter knew he’d changed was the morning when he laid his eyes on his infant son.

The rest of the scene was there: Ginny in the bed, her hair loose and her face sweaty, weariness sucked into the very hollows of her cheeks, and yet there she was, reaching both arms for her firstborn.

James— unnamed but for an hour— was pink and loud, and unfazed, and Harry had to reach sideways very quickly and wrap his fingers around the bedpost to keep himself upright. He thought he’d known fear like this, until this moment. And the fear was every inch for himself because without himself, there could very well cease to be a son, a mother and wife, a safe house (was it really as safe as it needed to be, dear gods?) and money enough for the food that would keep them all alive. Harry had never felt the edges of his existence like this before.

It was a particularly odd, particularly vivid sensation: He knew he wouldn’t be drinking anymore, not even with just Seamus because Dean had a daughter now and drank nothing but water at the pub, and Harry hadn’t understood why until just then. And not that he had any real idea of quitting, but suddenly the notion of being an Auror, a position he’d had his eye on since the end of school, felt a little more frivolous and selfish and _dangerous_. Being killed in the line of duty may be heroic, but it had never sounded like such poor reasoning to give a devastated mother until James came along. She would still be alone, no matter how heroic the deceased father had been.

Falling into the habit of feeling uncomfortable with himself all the time had taken about three months. There were no details to remember, no explanations, though Ginny had asked after his silences. Sometimes Harry’s insides battled; and then he remembered guilt, and that, without the soul searching, was enough to calm the fight once more. He had an office, he had files. He had international interests to handle and legislation to check and balance. He made safe decisions and remained a content father and husband with a cosy house and comfortable funds.

So the fact that he was here at all tonight, two years later in the dingy squalor of Knockturn abandonment, _by himself_ , was something he didn’t quite understand.

The ward was weak but it covered plenty enough ground to give way with a tearing sound. The ensuing scuffle in the shadows had Harry’s arm straight, wand shivering at the ends of his fingers, and counting two separate voices before one dark form wrenched itself free of the other and spun, cracking out of the room and leaving a gasping companion stumbling forward with the inertia of the struggle.

“You, freeze!” Harry lunged over tumbled once-furniture, his footing still instinctively sure and his wand much too close by the time the shadow person stood and turned to look at him. And the person did freeze, completely, save for the heaving shoulders.

It was strange to be listened to so intently. The office never granted him such favours; there, extra effort was required, even with his name. Harry shoved the office from his mind, heart thudding nearly into the back of his mouth as he scanned the room’s periphery. Empty; he could feel nothing and no one else. The other person had ceased attempting to breathe quietly. His air whooshed in and out with too quick a rhythm.

Merlin, what was he doing? He had a brand new baby at home, and a one-year-old to rock back to sleep when he woke up, and Ginny exhausted in bed, and Harry’s life hadn’t been this on the line since the third year of Auror training and the asphodel-addict who had nearly skewered him. The only thought that truly formed in his head, however, was fleeting and consisted of the fact that neither of his second son’s namesakes would be proud of Harry for tossing his life away needlessly, though each for very different reasons.

He edged closer to the man in the darkness, beating his brain about how strangely his job could go wrong, even simple tasks such as tracking down a supposedly empty illegal embarkation point— was that really what this was?— and gathering magical residue for analysis. He’d not expected a shadowy pair. 

“Where is she?” For it had been a she, he was fairly sure about that. Harry aimed directly at the man’s head. 

“Potter, it’s me,” came a low, nervous voice. Two hands rose, pale in the gloom, very slowly climbing their way upward.

Harry blinked. And locked his wand arm completely. “Malfoy.”

He wasn’t sure where the recognition had come from. Something built in, perhaps. Or the voice, still recognisable in the way it edged around his surname. He stepped forward more purposefully and Malfoy stepped back in accordance, keeping the distance.

“Where is she?” Harry snapped again.

“Blame yourself!” Malfoy seethed, fists curling. “If you hadn’t broken my ward, she wouldn’t have been able to Apparate away!”

“Shut up, Malfoy, _don’t move_.” It wasn’t an illegal embarkation point at all. Harry’s instincts hadn’t left him, and he still knew certainty when he saw it, even if others tended not to believe him. He could feel the taint of magic that wasn’t his on the air, soft slow wards working to conceal, and the coming and going of furtive people. “You’ve been here before. Haven’t you?”

Malfoy’s face shivered and went blank. His eyes skittered away. “I am doing nothing wrong, Potter,” he said lowly.

“Sure, that’s why you’re in a derelict shell of a building in the dead of night, crafting wards to keep people in here with you!” Harry moved forward, and Malfoy again stepped back. Harry could see he didn’t have much further to go, however. The wall was too close. “What is this, Malfoy? Who did I just miss?”

Malfoy remained quiet for a few seconds. Then, “If you already have your suspicions, why bother asking?”

It was said with such venom that Harry paused. And decided to move around it. “This place is full of concealing magic. And you’ve got a record already.”

The flames burst at last under Malfoy’s visage. “You’ve got nothing, Potter, nothing but a useless decade-old charge against _my father!_ ”

Harry clenched his jaw hard, grinding his teeth until the pain pricked through his anger and fear. Malfoy hadn’t tried anything; that alone was notable, wasn’t it? Harry’s Auror training kicked in, but for some reason, he was having trouble grasping it before it slipped sideways out of reach again. “If your father is the only one that did anything wrong, then what are you doing here?” he growled.

Malfoy’s face tightened. But Harry already had pieces falling into place, people vanishing here and there, certain people who shouldn’t have been able to vanish like that, who should have been tracked, only somehow there was nothing left to track them with, and it hardly mattered if Harry didn’t quite agree with the methods; this was the law being broken. The Travel Regulations Bill. A law he was in charge of. And he damn well wanted to know why he was out here in the cold rather than back at home under the covers, next to his wife.

“Your friends have been leaving the country. Haven’t they? No, I said don’t move.” He levelled his wand, and Malfoy stilled. The look on the man’s face… Something very unexpected and quite like excitement jolted weakly through Harry’s nerves. 

“The laws…” Malfoy swallowed. He wasn’t looking at Harry. “You can’t keep us here.”

Harry smirked, abruptly needing a deep strike. “No, you’re nothing like your father, are you?”

“What does that mean?” Malfoy said coldly.

“He was a lot of things. But he didn’t wheedle. Or stutter. Or _beg_.”

Malfoy sneered. “You think I’m helpless? Look closely, Potter. You’ve got nothing on me.”

“I’ve got my wand,” Harry answered quietly. Malfoy’s eyes skipped down to the object in question and he swallowed again. “I’m turning you in.”

“For _what?_ ” 

_For keeping me up at night!_ Harry wanted to shout. “You’re breaking Wizarding Law. And I suspect you’ve been doing it for the last year! Draco Malfoy, under the authority of the Wizengamot, I’m arresting you. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used—”

“You’re going to lock me up,” Malfoy interrupted. “For helping people.”

Afterward, Harry couldn’t say why it snatched the words away from his tongue like it did. He’d faced down silken phrases before, from many sources. But suddenly he was wordless and staring at the other man. Malfoy’s face flickered. It might have been triumph, but it was gone again immediately.

“For breaking the law.”

“A law that is wrong,” Malfoy hissed. 

It was a little too much. Harry snorted out a laugh. “Convenient that you only care now! I didn’t here you complaining when the law was passed last year!”

Malfoy’s face flushed. But it was the truth, and Harry was angry enough to use it to all ends tonight. The only thing more galling was that back then, it had felt like enough, simply voting against it. That was what one did when one disagreed, and the bill had received two ‘no’ votes from Harry’s household. It had a nasty shadow to it, one which Hermione had rallied against, one which Harry still spoke out against, however little his word really swayed people anymore. But the vote had been the vote. The public spoke in less violent ways nowadays. 

And Draco Malfoy most certainly hadn’t said a word during that mess of a decision. It had been easy for Harry to loathe the haughty man’s silence; Hermione hadn’t stopped speaking out, not now or then, and Harry was proud to say he’d not stopped either. But he wasn’t the world’s saviour anymore, and this wasn’t war. Politics fought its battles with other weapons. 

And former, older saviours had other aspects of life to think about on top of everything else.

The bill had gone through. They could always work to have it repealed, Hermione had sighed. Except Harry, lobbying on weekends to end the very law he had to uphold on weekdays, behind his desk watching the illegal disappearance of people the bill had ended up tagging, had long been thinking that repeal was not a fast enough resolution.

Mightn’t they all be a shadow of Voldemort, marking off certain people, diminishing their rights? Not crucial rights, of course. Not the right to life or work or family or freedom. Just some minor freedoms that people had to earn anyway, like the license to Apparate. 

The campaign had been damned effective, obviously.

“And what’s in it for you?” Harry demanded. 

Malfoy sneered. “Money, of course. Gods, do you think I’m some concerned citizen? After all your railings to the contrary?”

He looked desperate, his eyes a touch wide, the glint in them wilder than normal. Harry studied him, wondering at last ditch attempts and manoeuvres. “You’ve become talkative suddenly.”

“You asked,” Malfoy shot back, and there was a tremor in his voice.

Harry grimaced and pointed his wand at Malfoy’s head again. The man’s hands shot up. 

“ _They_ haven’t done anything to deserve this.” Malfoy licked his lips stiffly. “Potter. You said I’m not my father. Just now, you said it.”

Gods. Harry rubbed his forehead. It was the truth, wasn’t it? Draco Malfoy, for all his bravado and bad deeds, had never been a Death Eater. He’d worn their Mark. But placed next to a person like Bellatrix Lestrange… Harry shuddered. There was no comparison. There never had been, not if Draco Malfoy could once stand there in his own drawing room and save three lives just by holding his terrified tongue. Even next to his own father, Draco Malfoy did not evoke the horror a person bearing the title of Death Eater should.

“Are you trying to win a pardon or something, Malfoy? Because it’s a lousy, idiotic effort!”

“I’ve been pardoned!” Malfoy spat. “Or weren’t you there?”

Oh, Harry had been there. Everyone had been there. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it, only that he knew relief when he felt it, and it had been a relief to see Draco Malfoy walking out of the Wizengamot in a direction other than toward Azkaban. Regardless of what Malfoy had allowed to happen, the very idea of his former schoolmate in conjunction with the Wizarding prison sent shivers rolling through Harry. It _didn’t_ fit. 

Except now Harry thought that maybe he’d been a little too careless about that estimation.

“Stop changing the subject,” Harry stated flatly. “Tonight’s what you should be worried about, not eight years ago.”

Malfoy’s body seemed to grow a little bit smaller, somehow. Harry couldn’t register a definite change, one he could quantify. But it was there anyway. 

“Potter,” Malfoy said slowly, pursing his lips. “What is it you want to know? If it’s information between me and a release, then I—”

“You think I’m that shallow?” Harry exploded. Malfoy flinched, but Harry didn’t care, he was past caring, now he was just furious. “You think I’ll trade for your freedom like some sort of bribe? Like some sort of—”

“I _thought_ you were Harry Potter!” Malfoy cried just as suddenly. His hands fisted, perhaps without his knowledge. The effect was curious, and Harry found himself staring at those whitened knuckles even as Malfoy’s tirade continued. “I thought you were the one who is always right, who always has to be right! So fucking righteous. And I thought you would still know the difference!”

Harry jerked his gaze up to meet Malfoy’s burning grey. He felt this mouth falling open, but it really wasn’t in his capacity to close it. Equal parts dismay and guilt and incredulity and… and disbelief, for Merlin’s sake. “You’re going to speak to my heroism?” he gaped. “You!”

“Oh, because I’m never right, of course! It’s obvious you still don’t think I know that very same difference between being righteous and being right.”

Gods. What a sodding mess. Harry felt absolutely stagnated, like he couldn’t move. To go in either direction betrayed something, and it was all so vague, he still didn’t have any idea what it was he was really contemplating doing here anyway, and somehow he had wandered right into a pool of tar, or maybe he’d been slogging through it for weeks. Months. And here it seemed he’d floundered back into the centre of it, which was a terrible place to be.

“You,” he managed, pointing his wand at the other man more to make a point than to threaten some magical outcome, “you are using me. You’re using everything you kn— everything you think you know about me.”

“So what if I am?” was the quick reply. “Does it make it any less true?”

No, damn it, it didn’t. The fucking bastard. The law was still wrong, and Draco Malfoy was still capitalising off of it somehow, and being right about it all the while. _We’re fighting it,_ Harry wanted to say bleakly. _We’re working through it, and soon… soon…_

Fine words. They didn’t change a thing.

He had to turn the man in. Had to. Otherwise he was letting criminal behaviour escape punishment. But it was hard to abide by a law that he himself loathed. How could he fight so easily with one hand and support so rigidly with the other? How could Draco Malfoy be asking for money for such a ‘necessary right’ as freedom to travel? How could he, Harry, be this deep in slime this late at night, and not feel as mucky as he should, and still hate his job for putting him into such a situation as this? If not for his work, he wouldn’t even be here.

“Just what do you fight for now anyway?” Malfoy asked. And maybe Harry read into that voice a nastiness that was not there, but whatever the cause, the result was rage.

“I don’t fight anymore!” he yelled, and watched Malfoy flinch again. “Gods, you damned people, you all think it’s my only purpose in life!”

Malfoy looked stunned, absolutely stunned. His lips were parted, and he stared at Harry as if he were waiting to be struck down. Maybe he was. Harry could feel his own magic ricocheting around the vast room. He struggled to pull himself inward, terrified of what he might do otherwise.

And the room lit with a pure, white light.

For one single second, Harry was convinced he was too late, in a horribly resigned sort of way, that he’d gone and killed them both, or maybe just Malfoy, but that was just as bad. When he had blinked and could see again, he realised he was staring at a liquid-light bird dropping from the ceiling in gentle down-strokes of its silent wings, to land gracefully upon the floor before them both. It turned blank eyes to his.

The Patronus kestrel opened its mouth and began without preamble: “We have not received a report from you in over an hour. Please advise in regards to your status.”

There was no mention of his name, of course, for security reasons. Harry felt the weight of time flurry through the air. The kestrel blinked calmly. It was waiting. Harry had a little over a minute to send a reply before the place would be swamped with other Aurors looking to protect him from whatever hell he might have tumbled into. Harry turned slowly, eyes adjusting to the dimmer light where the Patronus was not, and gazed at his counterpart.

Malfoy’s head jerked very gently. “Well,” and he licked his lips. “What will it be, Potter? You’ve only a few more seconds.”

It wasn’t snide or patronising. Just the anxious inquiry. Malfoy’s eyes were wide open and unmoving.

Harry looked back at the Patronus where it stood, and then back at Malfoy. And weighed.

* * *

When Harry walked through the bedroom door, Ginny’s head angled upward in such a way that Harry stopped and waited. 

“For the love of the Founders, Harry, where were you?” His wife bounced the blanketed form of their infant son lightly in one arm and struggled to adjust her nightgown. The lamp cast them both in a yellow pool of light, leaving the rest of the room as shadowy as the night outside. Ginny glared at Harry with exhausted eyes. “I was about ready to Floo for an Auror!”

Harry toed off his shoes with a barely suppressed sigh. “Hardly necessary.”

“I was worried, Harry,” she admonished. Her tone stopped him and he looked up to find her staring at him, her brow distressed. He glanced at the fussy baby in her arms, and his agitation slipped right out from under him. And then he really did sigh.

“I’m sorry, Gin.” His shoulders felt so heavy; he suddenly wanted out of his cloak very badly. He clambered at the clasp for several dismal seconds before it finally gave, and then dropped the cloak behind him on the floor. Ginny’s eyes tracked the motion of the fabric, but she didn’t say anything about it.

“Should have Flooed,” she muttered. Albus Severus gave a wail and Ginny let out an exasperated groan. “Fine. I’m finished then, he’s not even bothering with eating. I’ve got to sleep. Take him?”

Harry left off with his second shoe and walked around the bed, lifting his fidgety son from Ginny’s arms and cradling the warm body close to his chest. Albus mewled loudly at the change of scene, but Ginny just grunted and scooted toward the centre of the bed, buttoning up her nightgown collar. “Not waiting for people who waste an entire hour not eating.”

Harry stared at his son for a moment, then blinked and shook his head slightly. “James been up at all?”

Ginny threw up her hands. “I’ve no idea. But he hasn’t made a peep.”

Harry nodded. Albus blinked sleepily at him and fussed, waving both arms weakly. Harry touched his nose to his son’s fuzzy head. “Oh, give it up, you,” he murmured softly. “You’re so tired you can’t even see straight.”

Indeed, Albus’ eyes were a little bit crossed when they finally drifted shut a minute later. Still, the baby wiggled, as if unwilling to give up his hold over the attention of the world. Harry rocked him gently until his breaths became steady and noisy. “I’m putting him in his room.”

“Mm,” Ginny grumbled from the bed.

Harry padded the darkened hallway in one shoe and one sock, listening distractedly for any sound from James’ room. Albus went into his crib with barely a twitch and Harry straightened, frowning at the dark window on the far wall. 

Ginny was not yet asleep when Harry came back into their bedroom. He sat down on the bed and heard his wife mumble something in his direction. He bent and began to tug at the laces of his leftover shoe.

“What were you doing so late?” Ginny said.

Harry’s hands stilled. He stared at his shoe, scuffed with a bit of dirt. From the building he’d traipsed through? _Bending the law, as it turns out,_ his mind murmured. _Letting a criminal go._

“Routine inspection,” he muttered, and then feared for the unsteadiness of his voice.

Ginny sighed. “Turn out the light when you’re done?”

Harry straightened and stared vaguely at the wall. “Saw Draco Malfoy tonight.”

“You’re not serious?” Ginny replied from behind him. The weariness in her voice edged a little further back. “Doing what?” 

It was like being jarred from behind by a shove. Harry hunched and yanked at the laces on his shoe. “Helping a friend. I don’t really know. Actually.”

“Well.” He felt Ginny shift on the bed. “That must have been surreal for you.”

Harry snorted. “You’ve no idea.” He pulled his shirt over his head and sloughed his trousers in a heap on the floor, then crawled up the bed, enduring a frown from his wife for needlessly jarring the mattress. His stomach twinged once at the unspoken. It was momentary. Harry consoled himself with the fact that there was really nothing but conjecture to tell.

* * *

Of course, nothing ended up happening by the time morning came. The realistic part of Harry knew there was less than a reason for Draco Malfoy to open his mouth and inform anyone of what had occurred. 

The wistful part of him wanted the decision made by someone else. Even if it meant that they all knew he’d consciously looked away from a broken law, at least it would no longer be in his hands.

But the next day went quite normally along its merry journey, and Harry returned to an office that hadn’t been cleaned out and warded against him, and did absolutely no work because working was difficult when one spent the whole time thinking of the tarnish broken morals might be leaving upon his character. Moribund, perhaps. 

But again, it was hard to escape the accompanying gloom. 

* * *

For some very odd reason, it was hard to look at Hermione Granger, too.

Harry shifted restlessly and fixed his eyes on the parchment in front of him, mostly because looking at his friend gave his stomach a tiny pain he didn’t know what to make of. Hermione was no supporter of lawbreakers. She didn’t even like breaking rules. It made Harry sick to his stomach to think that he had a secret again, one over which she would lose at least some respect for him.

But that… was just stupid. Harry frowned. There she was, nitpicking the legal wording of the Horrendous Bill of Utter Idiocy itself in search of inconsistencies, and Harry feared for her opinion? Surely she would appreciate the dark humour this time, the effort and the sacrifice of nerves. Harry had become quite used to following rules, perhaps too used to it. It just felt instinctively wrong to break them now, and he realised abruptly that he didn’t think much of that feeling.

Why, _why_ had he let Malfoy go? Why hadn’t he just slapped chains on him and dragged him back to the Ministry, and… and… given them a reason to put him in Wizarding prison, because gods knew the Minister these days didn’t need much of a reason. And this one was more than enough to imprison a regularly upstanding citizen. Which begged the question: was Malfoy a regularly upstanding citizen? Harry supposed so. There had been no recent brouhaha about the Malfoys, old or young, not even much of a whisper from the society columns with which Rita Skeeter still made her paycheck. Just a three-year-old marriage and a passing of assets— not much of them, but no one was really paying enough attention to that nowadays, were they?— and the birth of a son. Scorpius Malfoy, an incredible addition to the current names of Wizarding children everywhere. He couldn’t be all that much younger than Albus. And maybe that had coloured Harry’s thinking the previous night, because what father could take another father away from his newborn child when he hadn’t really… hadn’t really done anything? 

Harry groaned and put his head in his hands, noting too late that he had drawn Hermione’s attention. She looked at him archly.

“Too tired, are you?”

Harry sighed. “Hermione, no. No, I’m here to help. As I said.”

Hermione’s cheeks coloured. “I’m sorry, Harry. You wouldn’t believe how much this has managed to aggravate me. Ron is furious with me half the time. Letting it consume me, he says.”

“You are,” Harry returned. “But that’s no surprise.”

“Well, I am going to find it, that’s as certain as the sun and moon. These politicians are all the same; so far gone into their own delusions. They’ll have slipped up somewhere, and I’m going to find out where and use it to slash their law to pieces.”

Harry smiled weakly. Couldn’t say anything, could he? She still went about her fight according to the rules. And she would win her fight according to the rules, a despairing part of his brain added. _Call this one a mistake,_ his mind wheedled. _Learn from it, move on, and don’t repeat._

But the idea of turning Malfoy over to the jailers still galled him more deeply than he could accept.

“And why shouldn’t they be allowed to go?” he spat suddenly, the words forcing themselves out in a huff of anxiety. “What’s so wrong with them?”

“Nothing, Harry,” Hermione answered immediately. “We can go anywhere we like, anytime we like! There’s absolutely no reason why they can’t have the same rights. You might have problems with anyone else! You might get trouble from anyone bouncing from country to country, but the nation just can’t function that way. We’d all end up trapped, and watched, with no privacy and no real freedoms. It’ll snowball, Harry, I promise you that. It will end up just like Voldemort.”

Harry had his doubts about that. Nothing could be exactly like Voldemort. The new dictator figure would have his or her own idiosyncrasies to get in the way. Harry found himself smirking, but as soon as he realised it, the amusement left him. He fiddled with his pack of parchment, glaring at it for existing. “It’s already been a bloody year,” he muttered.

Hermione narrowed her gaze at him testily. “All the more reason to nip it while it’s young, Harry. The longer it stays—”

“I know that, Hermione, you’ve used the same sentence a dozen times this month. The papers will be ready to patent it if you don’t stop.”

“I’m only saying it has no place here,” she said, somehow calm again. She scribbled busily in the margin of one of the pages she held. Harry glanced over and found the page already red with handwritten ink. “I can’t believe it’s gone so far backward so fast. Doesn’t anyone see what Minister Ackworth is doing?”

“Of course they do,” Harry scoffed. “They see reforms and solutions and ‘protect the children!’ They won’t see what it really is until it hits too close to home.”

“Which it won’t do yet,” Hermione said firmly. “We’ll have to make it hit close to home.”

Harry eyed her. “I would have voted for it. If all I’d done was read the brochures.”

Hermione looked at him for a long moment. Then she shrugged. “That’s the majority for you. Predict it, dress it up, and sell it. It means something to people when they feel some sort of control over their lives. The lives of their families.”

Harry snorted, but it was true. It had looked good. It had hit all the right places, namely the family values angle. Don’t let dead wars take your children as well. What a catchy, stupid, intelligent slogan. Hard to feel right about voting against it.

He had, of course. It just hadn’t been enough. And it had been a blow to discover that, even though Hermione and Ron and Ginny and Luna had voted against it as well, Dean had voted for it. And Seamus hadn’t voted at all. Harry told himself he could hardly blame them, but in reality he felt he could very easily blame them: Seamus for not making the tough decisions and Dean for thinking about only one half of the equation.

“It’s still a half of the equation, Harry,” Dean had said simply, his eyebrows raised in challenge. Harry had not risen to it. He couldn’t argue with such a strong rebuttal as ‘I’m doing what I deem necessary to keep my family safe.’

Draco Malfoy should be in prison. But he wasn’t anywhere near there. And Harry was still not convinced that he’d done the wrong thing. Just, he was also not convinced anyone else would see it in quite the same way.

He suspected Hermione was pregnant. Call it a hunch, or maybe wartime nerves whispering at him still. Perhaps it was hinted in the way she carried herself, or the way she sat in chairs. All he knew for sure was that Ron had suddenly become twice as protective, and that Hermione had become twice as defiant. It gave him a shiver; would Hermione change her tune once she had her first child? Would she see eye to eye with him about what he’d let Malfoy get away with? Children did funny things to people by being born. Harry could attest.

“Do you consider them unsafe, Hermione?” he ventured. 

She snorted, not looking up from her stack of parchment. “Doesn’t matter if they are. They’ll make themselves unsafe in response to this. They’ll find other ways to leave the country, ways that are less than _safe_ , Harry. They’re part of this community, same as us, and they deserve the same treatment!”

 _But… if you were a parent._ He wanted to know, but he wasn’t sure which answer he suspected— or longed for— more. He watched Hermione frown fixedly at the page in front of her, her fingers clenching a bit tighter around her pen, and then her eyes darted up and down, reading, reading. 

“Founders, look what they’ve done here, they’ve bypassed the bit about travelling application procedures with this blurb concerning Apparition licenses. It’s such a catch; they can’t apply without having gained the license to Apparate, which they can’t do anyway because travel is out of the question under section 15A!”

Suddenly Hermione slammed her hands down and followed it with a general slump onto the table. “Merlin! What I wouldn’t give to get this law repealed right now!”

It seemed to Harry as if the room had gone just a little bit quiet. “You would.”

She shook her head and her miserable voice rose from its muffled place behind her torrent of hair. “It’s unfair, Harry. It’s downright illegal.”

“Yeah,” Harry murmured after a moment. “Yeah, it is.”

* * *

Harry took his time walking through the wind, feeling the fabric of his trousers plastering itself to his shins and listening to the rising screams and shouts of those actually watching the Quidditch match roaring by overhead. He headed across the still-dewy grass, hands deep in his pockets and out of the cold, wishing he’d brought another scarf, and finally leaned against the rickety fence until he could see flying blond hair out of the corner of one eye.

“Alright,” he said.

Draco Malfoy made some sort of movement, a slow un-slouch that possibly brought him off the fence— Harry didn’t know, because he wasn’t looking. Malfoy was a dark blur below shining gold; the wind tossed his coat ends up and Harry had to fight not to look their way. 

“You’re not… turning me in.”

It was weird to hear Malfoy speak so calmly. Especially when Harry sensed he might dart away at any second.

Bugger it all; he turned to look directly at the man and saw that he was right. Malfoy stood on the balls of his feet, shoulders rigid and eyes fixed. 

“No,” Harry said after a moment. Malfoy continued to stare at him. Harry wished he would stop, and said as much. Snapped as much.

Malfoy’s eyes darted away. He blinked once, twice. Exhaled. “So that’s it, then. Looking the other way.”

“I’ll get you what you need,” Harry said irritably. The wind took his voice and lost it amongst the yelling across the pitch. Malfoy glanced at him again quickly.

“Just like that.”

“And now you’re going to have second thoughts,” Harry hissed. “What is this, some sort of trick? A plant to see if I’m—”

“Potter, shut up,” Malfoy snapped. “I do have a vested interest in how this proceeds, if you’ll remember.”

“Oh, I know you do,” Harry snarled back. It made Malfoy look at him a little more carefully, which was what Harry had been hoping for.

“Something to tell me, Potter?”

Harry shrugged. He wasn’t about to go into the semantics of it. Research, and calling for back up, had both been a part of Harry’s training. And calling for back up didn’t always mean signalling one’s fellow Auror. 

“You’re deporting someone specific. Someone who can yank your strings, I expect.”

Malfoy scowled and looked away. “What the hell would you know about string yanking, Potter?”

“Your wife, I’m guessing,” Harry shot back, irritated at the lack of power he seemed to be retaining. “Unhappy already?”

To his surprise, Malfoy didn’t snarl any sort of reply. He just turned and studied Harry thoughtfully. “Actually, it’s her sister,” he finally said.

It only took Harry a fraction of a second. “Daphne Greengrass.”

Malfoy’s mouth quirked into a smirk and then smoothed out again. “My wife’s not leaving me yet, Potter.”

Harry frowned at him. Malfoy raised his eyebrows and stared back for a moment, then sighed and looked away.

“She can’t leave England. Their mother’s ailing badly, in another country, and they won’t even give her a pass.”

“That’s a pretty excuse,” Harry said flatly. Malfoy glanced at him, blank-faced. Shrugged.

“What will work better?”

Harry sighed. “Never mind. I’m not doing this for you.” He turned away to get his bearings, but spun back again as a new fear popped into his head. He pointed a finger at Malfoy. “She’s not to know who is getting her the paperwork. She finds out, and I tell them about your wife’s shoddy attempts to procure her own passes.”

Malfoy’s face paled and Harry let his own smirk slip free. It was a good card to play; he was glad he’d saved it. Malfoy shifted on his feet, eyes darting. “She didn’t do any harm,” he muttered.

“She did a crap job,” Harry returned. “You’re lucky nothing ever came of it, or I’d have been onto _you_ a lot faster.”

Malfoy’s resulting glare was sharp enough to stab Harry. And then he flushed and looked down. “Daphne’s not going to know.”

Harry let out a silent breath. It was ludicrous to suggest that he would rat Malfoy out. The other man would only have to turn around and tell them who was helping him this time around. Harry supposed he could talk his way out of it, maybe. Play the ‘more trustworthy’ angle. But it was much too risky to count on.

But, gods, who was he trying to blame here? And who was he trying to fool? Himself? His motivation was hardly sinister, hardly worthy of such tactics by either of them. All Harry Potter was doing now was just what Harry Potter had always been doing: saving Wizarding kind. It was a little pathetic. Such a smaller scope than rising from the dead to beat Voldemort into the stone walls of Hogwarts. 

For a minute, Harry was ashamed of himself. He’d fought for these laws, hadn’t he? Or rather, the ability to decide laws without the help of a psychopathic dictator. And here he was, turning right around to hoodwink the ones he couldn’t get rid of with a good tantrum.

But it didn’t take him as long as it had the night previous to remind himself that some laws were just unfair. And that was his cue to stop thinking about it before he confused himself again.

“So, what is this?” Harry exhaled. He leaned against the railing and crossed his arms. “Some attempt to strengthen family ties?”

Malfoy snorted. “She _is_ paying me, Potter. Gods, only a hero…”

Harry straightened, suddenly curious. “You’re really taking money?”

“No, I’m funding it from my bottomless ancestral coffers in the depths of the great and mighty Gringotts. Fuck’s sake, Potter, you are an imbecile, aren’t you?”

Harry resisted the urge to punch the blond. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the Malfoy vaults had been fairly enough drained over the past eight years. Kingsley had done nothing so trite. But the Minister who had followed him, Alfred Abelard Ackworth, had had no qualms about exacting recompense from Voldemort’s former generals. And all of their kin. Harry rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly sick of it all. If not for this bloody law—

“Look, maybe you’d better convince me again of how much you actually want what I can get you, otherwise I’ll just be on my—”

Malfoy straightened as if pulled. “No. Potter. That won’t be necessary. Whatever terms you want are yours.”

Harry looked at him and saw very clearly that Malfoy realised what it was he’d just said. The blond man’s gaze darted away and he licked his lips. Harry sniffed softly, wondering what exactly was passing through Malfoy’s mind. Harry could demand money, he supposed. Or secrets. Something to hold over the man and his family. It was all rather disgusting, and funny, in a horribly stupid way. Harry wanted to laugh, but held it back.

“Don’t worry, Malfoy,” he muttered. “I’m not going to walk all over you.”

“Yet,” was the irritated reply.

This time Harry couldn’t hold the smile back. It had its freedom for several seconds.

* * *

It was easier to work out the details than Harry had expected. Daphne Greengrass was kept safely out of the picture, to Harry’s surprise. Not that he expected Malfoy to flagrantly ignore his request. He’d just… not expected Malfoy to help this proceed smoothly. He was so used to fighting with the man, and that was strange, seeing as they’d barely been in contact with each other for eight years. Why should he automatically feel like arguing with Draco Malfoy? They were adults, and they both knew each was made up of more than his foremost traits. At least, Harry knew Malfoy was made of more. That had been well-proven to him in sixth year. He hoped he’d been given the same courtesy in Malfoy’s consideration, at least of the year that followed.

And wasn’t that an odd yearning? To be thought well of by someone he’d never expected to care about. And he didn’t. He was just curious.

“ _You’re_ antsy,” Ginny said grumpily one morning when Harry was running late. She combed James’ fine hair with a soft-bristled brush and straightened his socks. And eyed Harry as he ran from room to room. “You don’t have to be in the office for an hour.”

“Got an errand to run,” Harry said around his necktie, which was lodged between his teeth as he struggled with his shirt buttons. It was an errand that didn’t involve the grocery and various fresh vegetables, as he’d been prepared to tell Ginny since the night before. Rather, it involved skipping the office entirely in favour of heading as far down in the Ministry as he could go without hitting the Department of Mysteries, and sorting through the necessary paperwork that Malfoy would be needing. Things had changed in the last three months, and Harry doubted Malfoy had kept up to date in his black-market transportation schemes. Proper paperwork wasn’t in such huge demand next to the mad running about and false appearances and chancy attempts to dash across the Channel. Or elsewhere.

Part of Harry still madly questioned what the hell it was he was doing, exactly. Endangering his job, that part of him offered. Lying to his wife, putting his entire reputation on the line. But when he really examined that last one, it made him more angry than worried. What exactly was a reputation if it wasn’t something one could be proud of? And Harry could admit freely to being much prouder of his subversive wartime reputation than he was of his current rule-following one. It wasn’t that he considered these rules less important. They were laws, after all. But they were wrong. It had just taken his childhood adversary to help him see it in clear light again.

“Well,” Ginny said at last, after seeming to mull over whether to respond at all, “if you could be home before dinner, I’d appreciate it. I’m supposed to be over at Mum’s for the evening.”

Her eyes pleaded with him. But it was unnecessary; Harry remembered. “I’ll be home,” he said, giving her a gentle and heartfelt smile.

After a moment, Ginny smiled back.

The Ministry was not terribly crowded yet, but bustling just enough to garner Harry more than a few hallos and waves. He was pressed into chit-chat twice, once in the Atrium and once in the lift on his way to his office. But everyone seemed to expect Harry Potter to be glued to the job; they let him go easily enough when he hinted. And it didn’t take very long to gather some folders and parchment rolls, and head even further down to the archives. There wasn’t much cause for others to be down here so early; Harry had a clear walk from the lift’s doors to the proper room, and found it empty of all but a few aides who were shuffling hurriedly through record tomes in search of something they had undoubtedly been ordered to find by their supervisors. He managed to surprise them— one girl even blushed. But Harry was soon out of their line of sight and digging through the appropriate files for what he needed.

It was somewhat shocking, however, to bump into Ron while exiting the aisle in which he’d been working.

“Oy, Harry.” Ron smiled and stepped back, and Harry found himself staring up at his much taller brother-in-law, any response unsettled from his thoughts. Ron was holding a sheaf of crinkled parchment, and he was wearing his field robes. “Your office neighbour told me you’d headed down here. Thought I’d see what you were up to before I head out.”

Harry straightened and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Morning. Where— Where are you off to today?”

“Islington. We’ve got a Wizard resident there who seems determined to out us to his Muggle neighbours by shouting out the window of a bedroom that shouldn’t even exist, if you get my drift. It’s the third time. I think the man’s just a bit dotty, but Freeman says it will be good, safe practice for me. Either way, bloke’s harmless.” Ron laughed.

“Wish I were going,” Harry said, surprised at how truly wistful he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t get time in the field. But Ron’s branch of the Auror department had diverged from Harry’s enough to throw their schedules off considerably.

“Need any help?” Ron shifted the parchment he held from one arm to the other. Harry glanced down at his own stack of papers, and then back up.

“Actually…” Well, there was no harm in asking, was there? “Could you sort me out a travel destination request? I’ve got to send someone out of the country and they’re having trouble getting the paperwork to go through.”

Ron grinned. “Sure, mate. Where are they heading?”

“France.” As soon as it was out, a new heaviness tugged at Harry’s gut.

“Shouldn’t be hard. I’ll drop it by your office later, before I head out for the evening.”

Harry waited, and then blinked. “You don’t need to know why I need it?”

“I trust you.” Ron grinned at him again and hefted his load of papers up. “And now I’m probably late enough to give Freeman at least five minutes of admonishments. Always fun to see the man get testy. Takes his job too seriously, that one.”

“Cheers,” Harry said dully as Ron waved and headed back out to the main door. He turned a corner around a shelf of sorted record tablets, and was gone. 

What had possessed him to ask for help from Ron? Harry stood in the aisle with his hands loose at his sides. Gods… why had he…? 

For the first time since Malfoy had come to him, Harry felt a new sort of guilt. And it hadn’t popped up before because it was really just his job he was risking, his reputation. Until now, now that he’d stupidly involved his best friend and brother-in-law. The worst fear struck Harry, that if he were caught, it wouldn’t just be him and Malfoy who went down, and possibly Greengrass, who knew the risks anyway, but Ron. Ron’s job. Ron’s reputation. Hermione might forgive him for a lot of things, but he doubted she would ever see the good side of knowingly dragging a friend into your downfall, especially when it wasn’t that friend’s choice to take the plunge.

Harry felt sick. All the way back up to his office, he felt like he was trudging through soupy fog, and each step just mired him deeper in the swamp about his ankles. And of course, once he was back behind his desk trying to move through it, the feeling only got worse.

He was jeopardising Ron’s career, and therefore his life. Ron wasn’t wealthy; he didn’t have the family funds to fall back on like Harry did. He made more than enough to live on comfortably, but how long would that last if he lost his job and his name fell into disgrace? Would a fallen Auror be able to get other employment with such a record? If he and Hermione started a family, how would he support them?

Merlin. He had no business messing about with other peoples’ lives like this. His own life was one thing, but was it really his own life only? What about Ginny? What about the boys, for that matter?

Harry grimaced. He yanked a piece of parchment off his desk and grabbed one of the scattered quills. _We have to meet,_ he jabbed onto the parchment, with instructions, then rolled it up and tucked it into his pocket. It took him less than ten minutes to leave the Ministry and make his way through late-day shopping crowds to the Wizarding post office. He selected a nondescript brown owl with friendly eyes and an especially curious face, tied the parchment roll to its leg, and directed it to “wherever Draco Malfoy is right now.” All while feeling numb.

When the owl was out of sight, Harry finally started to feel something. And he wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t feel much like the relief it should have.

Malfoy didn’t answer the owl; rather, he came himself nearly ten hours later, directly onto the twilit grass in the now-abandoned Quidditch pitch where Harry had first agreed to go along with his plan. He wore a black cloak that closed over his entire frame, leaving nothing but his pale face and windblown hair whipping about his temples. He walked right up to Harry without preamble, and Harry suppressed a sharp inhalation. These last few days had been a study in being caught off-guard by the most unpredictable things. Harry wondered if his brain chemistry weren’t slowly turning on him.

“We need to talk,” Harry stated, staring anywhere but at the other man as soon as he could get away with it.

Malfoy extended one finely gloved hand— at least, it looked finely gloved on first glance, but Harry could see the threadbare fingertips just along the stitching and the way the ends of the glove frayed just beneath the shield of Malfoy’s sleeve.

“Here,” Malfoy said quietly. His eyes darted to Harry’s and fell back again. “In case you’re having cold feet.”

Harry stared at Malfoy, unsure whether he wanted to be angry or amazed at having been discovered. But the look in Malfoy’s eyes startled him on a very foundational level; there was something in his irises, a look, a tug, that was reminiscent of Ginny’s eyes that very morning.

In his hand was a small vial containing a cloudy white substance.

Malfoy turned to leave, stepping silently over the damp grass, and then he stopped and his shoulders rose and sank once. He turned around, and Harry still couldn’t find the protests he’d been meaning to make. Malfoy gestured at the vial with a weary hand.

“She doesn’t know,” he said over the wind. “I swear she doesn’t.”

Harry looked down at the vial. Too late, he heard a crack, and when he looked up, Malfoy was gone.

* * *

He was pressing his luck with Ginny, he knew it. Harry slid into his desk chair and placed the vial carefully in front of him where he could look at it. He’d tested it, of course, and found only tempered glass. Still, he wasn’t about to bring it into his home, not until he was certain there was nothing wrong with it. And he didn’t have much time left before his wife came at him via Howler.

It was definitely a Pensieve memory. There were no potions that looked quite like one of those. And Harry had a feeling he knew whose it was. It made him want to yell, to storm over to the Manor and throw the vial in Malfoy’s face.

But… Malfoy had sworn. And Harry wanted to believe him. There was just something surreal about the twilight air and the windy pitch, and Malfoy coming to him over the grass in black. Harry swallowed. Founders, he was already in this too deep. It was going to collapse on him.

Harry sank back into his chair, and then straightened again and got up, making his way through his office to the cupboard near the window. The false sky was thoroughly darkened outside; it was early yet, but only because it was wintertime. He opened the cupboard with his wand, got his personal Pensieve out, and carried it back to the desk. He lifted his wand and hesitated, then wove a spell, one that, if he himself did not shut it down in ten minutes, would send an alert to Ginny to come and find him, whatever state he might be in. After that, promises be damned, he didn’t care what happened to Draco Malfoy.

The memory slipped from the vial like fog and floated down into the silver bowl. It was only a single memory, that Harry could tell. It didn’t take him more than a moment to test its authenticity; every Auror worth anything knew how to check for tampering. There was nothing he could find that suggested anything other than a magical withdrawal of the thought from another’s head. There was also nothing of Malfoy’s magical signature on it, and it was impossible to mask that sort of thing completely. 

Harry studied the whirling memory for another few seconds. No taints, no tricks, at least none of which he was aware. His heart beat faster with every wave of his wand over it, and slowed again when nothing was uncovered. The risk was minimal, and though his nerves shouted otherwise, his instinct told him he was safe. Why Malfoy would do anything to jeopardise his own secret enterprise was the real question, and one to which Harry hadn’t been able to come up with an answer, though he’d been pondering it for the last few days. This was obviously something to convince him to go through with their plan, and it wasn’t Malfoy’s. Which only left one option that made any sense.

Harry took a deep breath and stopped thinking, just clutched the sides of the Pensieve and bent his head over and into it. And drifted down into a room that was tidy and well-organised, even if the wallpaper had seen better days and the furniture was mismatched. He recognised Daphne Greengrass almost immediately. She’d grown older. Harry had never realised that he remembered her smiling until now, when he saw clearly that she was not. She wasn’t frowning, but there was no mirth anywhere in her countenance. Just a keen attentiveness, and passivity. She was sitting at a plain wooden desk, dressed for the sunny day outside the window, but in stockinged feet with no shoes in sight. She held an envelope; Harry heard a hoot and saw the large owl belatedly, perched on the wide windowsill blinking. He heard the tearing of paper and turned back to find Daphne unrolling a short scroll filled with slanting writing. Harry stepped closer, but even before he got there, he could see Daphne’s shoulders begin to sag.

The letter was not long. It was not hopeful. And it was dated three weeks ago. The signature was that of another Greengrass, and the contents of the letter made it obvious that the hand belonged to Daphne’s father.

There were two lines that stood out. The first spoke of illness, and of a woman Harry had never met, but there was no subterfuge, no code. Daphne Greengrass’ mother was sick, and her father only wrote to inform. The second line made it clear that he held out little hope of her being able to procure the necessary papers to come. 

It turned Harry’s stomach to think that other eyes might have seen this letter, looked through the contents for anything suspicious and then let it go on its way to the young woman it was meant for.

The memory-Daphne broke his musings with a choked sound. She laid the letter down atop the desk and smoothed it with her fingers. Then she shoved her chair back so fast she nearly hit Harry, and went to the window, opening it and letting the owl out. And then she slumped. The cold air rolled into the room, and Harry watched Daphne’s arms ripple into gooseflesh. But she didn’t move. After nearly a full minute, she began to cry.

Harry wanted to feel manipulated, even as the image faded and his body pulled him back into the only reality left, his chair and his office. He wanted to feel pushed. 

He wanted to get home.

Harry scooped up the memory with automatic wand waves and slipped it back into the vial. The Pensieve was put away, the vial safely beside it beneath an obscuring charm. Harry locked his office and headed to the main lobby to catch the evening Floo lines, and was in his own living room in time to see Ginny hurry out of the kitchen with her cloak in her hands.

“Oh, good, there you are. Was work alright then?”

Harry set his own cloak aside and turned to fiddle with his briefcase, keeping his face out of sight. He wasn’t sure what was on it at the moment. “Fine. Perfectly fine.”

“That’s good to hear. I’ve set the boys up with dinner— well, James with dinner, Albus with a bottle. I’m sure he’s dribbled it all over himself despite the floating spell. He’ll need a bath if you’re very unlucky.”

Ginny’s current state of busy-ness left little excuse for Harry to speak, and when she finally departed for the evening, he had barely uttered three sentences longer than a single word. It was depressing to see his wife disappear into the green flames of the Floo, and Harry turned toward the kitchen with a sudden longing.

Oddly enough, Albus had not made a mess of his outfit, and James took his time eating, giving Harry plenty of time to nod and hum to the unintelligible prattle of his eldest son. Asking questions that were bound never to be answered had become such a strange comfort. Harry wiped corn-flavoured mush from James’ face and re-tucked his bib time and again until everyone was finished.

Getting ready for bed was an uneventful affair. Albus, thankfully, was not one to fuss tonight: he watched his brother bounce about the room and on the bed, and finally into bed, until his eyelids were drooping and Harry was rocking the baby’s sleep-heavy body as he walked him down the hall to the nursery. Albus kicked once when James yelled ‘firsty!’ down the hall, but did not wake. Harry headed back to the kitchen and got a cup of water for James, yawning, then knelt by James’ bed and stroked his forehead into sleepiness again.

* * *

Harry held out the sheaf of parchment, and pulled his hand back when Malfoy reached out belatedly to take it. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’re not meeting here again,” he muttered.

Malfoy was quiet for a moment. Harry glanced over to see that his silence was really a perusal of the documents. Once or twice Malfoy’s grey eyes rose to meet his, and Harry stared back each time. Finally, Malfoy tucked the papers away into his cloak.

“I know,” he answered. “It’ll have to be somewhere else.”

Harry glared away from him over the empty Quidditch pitch. “If there’s even an occasion.” He dug around in his pocket and pulled out the vial. “Here. Give it back to her.”

Malfoy took it without comment, but Harry saw the gentle way he handled it, the care with which he placed it in his own pocket. For some reason, Harry felt his spirits lift, just a little bit. He nodded to himself and cleared his throat. “It’s all there. She won’t have any trouble getting past the Floo checkpoints. The Floo monitors most likely won’t recognise her; she’s not on any urgent alert list. But she shouldn’t try to disguise herself magically. They track for that sometimes.”

“Alright,” Malfoy said. He was looking at him, Harry could feel it. 

“What about your wife?” Harry said gruffly, wondering why he was interested anyway. “You haven’t said anything about her wanting to go.”

Malfoy looked uncomfortably resigned, if that were possible. “My wife isn’t on good terms with the rest of her family. I’m… still convincing her to reconsider.”

Harry cleared his throat again when the silence stretched. “Most of them aren’t, you know,” he said at last, and Malfoy’s brows went down.

“What?”

Harry gestured. “On any list. There are only a few they really look out for.”

Malfoy hesitated, and then nodded. His mouth wavered into an uncertain smile, but it was genuine. “Thank you. Potter.”

“Malfoy.” Harry nodded to him and turned, shivering, a little weak in the knees, but moving away steadily. He didn’t listen for any Apparating crack, and eventually he was too far away, and the wind too strong, for him to hear.

His own journey home was rather longer, involving an aimless walk to a place he didn’t recognised, before gathering himself into as much of a cohesive whole as he could, and Apparating into his own backyard. The lights were on in the kitchen and the setting sun cast a warm orange light over the back of the small house. He opened the back door to the smell of good food, and came up behind Ginny in time to hear her humming. It was something she hadn’t done in nearly a year, not that he could catch. The abruptness of his arrival was enough to silence her, but the sound of her voice stayed with Harry long after he lay in bed beside his sleeping wife and stared up at the darkness.

The next morning came far too quickly for Harry; he got out of bed mechanically when his alarm rang, dressed, and wandered downstairs with some intention of going to the kitchen, but he wasn’t sure why. He did not mean to eat; that was reserved for the next hour when he met with Hermione to continue their political upheavals. For the first time in months, the Muggle coffee sent over by his father-in-law did not appeal to him, and he left the house without it and walked in a bit of a daze until he came upon the café where he was supposed to meet his friend.

It took him seven minutes to travel the four blocks, and by the time he reached the end of his jaunt, he was smiling.

It was done, whatever it was. Finished. And not regretted, strangely enough. It should have felt sour, he had thought it would. But now there was little of that taste in his throat. Only completion, and relief.

And perhaps some pride.

Hermione sat out on the small patio, notes strewn across the table before her and stuck in place by some obscured charm, Harry was sure. She caught sight of him as he swung the delicate ironwork gate open and headed for her.

“Well,” Hermione said, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re happier than usual.”

Harry smiled again, and it kept growing, if not on the outside, then on the inside where he could feel its warmth. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

 

~tbc~


	2. Seven of Cups

_And here, here is the Seven of Cups. Take care with the cups, for they flow over and yet do not hold enough. Here are the choices you cannot make, and the ones you must. But watch them, for they are the ones with the weight, instead of you._

 

It was the third one Harry had done for Draco. And it _was_ Draco now, and not Malfoy.

Harry didn’t know if he could call the man a friend. Friends weren’t supposed to get one into shady dealings. Then again, so-called heroes were not supposed to be tempted in the first place. Or maybe they were and they were supposed to refuse.

Harry Potter had sort of… jumped that ship.

He knew the routine rather well by now. It was only a journey of three minutes or so down to the archival sections, then a quick rummage before he found the parchments he needed to duplicate. It had only taken him twice to realise that more copies were better, as there was a magical log that recorded each time he came down. That second time, he’d made copies just to be safe. Pragmatic. Preparing for any instance. Not because he honestly thought he’d—

But here he was again, not copying but noting a third name surreptitiously in the legal documentation tomes. A few pages back, he’d snuck Daphne Greengrass’ name in. A page later, Malcolm Baddock sat cleanly between two other names, as if he’d always been there. And now, near the top of the final page, Pansy Parkinson.

Harry was past trying to find a motivation as good as Daphne’s for leaving. According to Draco, who had been ambivalent to good motivations long before Harry, Pansy had stated that she ‘just wanted to leave.’ And seeing how tricky it had become to get anything done in that respect, Harry wasn’t about to blame her for it.

He just wished he could see the end of the road he was walking down. But he couldn’t even attest to seeing the beginning anymore. Maybe if he could, he could figure out how he’d come to be standing in the bramble of such an unfamiliar path. And around every corner was the biggest, and most repetitive, surprise: he did not mind Draco Malfoy.

Harry pocketed his quill and closed the tome, then settled it back in its shelf with the other increasingly older tomes. One for each decade, with thousands of names, most of them repeated as Apparition licenses were renewed and modes of travel changed over the years. He knew barely anyone else looked at these logs; he himself had had the most contact with them of any Auror, even before Draco Malfoy had happened along with his cry for help. It had begun as one of the jobs new Aurors simply had to get through, and for whatever reason, it had stuck with Harry. Perhaps because he’d been more attentive than most.

It wasn’t hard when he had a bloody travel legislation to fight against. Hermione had never been so glad of connections.

He was nearly off. The enchanted landscapes outside the windows were darkening accordingly. And it wasn’t Ginny he was thinking of, though in the back of his mind he knew he should be heading home and helping her to feed their sons and ready them for bed. He was thinking of Hermione, because if there was one thing that was making him especially antsy in all of this, it was that he had to sit on this information all alone.

It had become clearer to him— really, he didn’t know how he’d missed it to begin with— that Hermione would not have a problem hearing that Harry had undertaken some extracurricular work on behalf of their noble fight. He was itching to tell her, to loosen some of the knots he was carrying around in his chest, and also to see the look on her face. He had a feeling it would add some hilarity to his stressful life. The question was, and had been for some weeks, what would be the best way to go about revealing his precious information? 

Especially when he was exacting such secrecy vows from Draco Malfoy. With whom he was about to meet. Again.

It wasn’t the Quidditch pitch anymore; over that, at least, Harry had been victorious. It felt funny to need such a decisive victory against Draco Malfoy again, to know he still had some sort of upper hand somewhere. Or to know they were on equal footing, perhaps. Maybe it was more than a little odd to be wandering down smallish alleyways in Diagon after closing hour when you were a happily married and content former saviour. But Harry could not subscribe to being content anymore. And there were four of them in his household now, not just the two; Harry didn’t have the energy or the will to examine how that might have changed his outlook on things.

Draco met him in the deeper shadows of a building that seemed to be leaning out over the alley itself, nearly blocking out the sight of the sky above. Harry briefly pondered the possibility of the building just giving up and toppling down on both of them right there. The image was darkly comedic, and he had to stifle a smile.

It was short-lived one anyway.

“She’ll have to wait. Four days.” Harry held out the folded pieces of parchment and watched Draco’s gloved hand slide forward to take them.

Draco studied their contents for a few seconds and then sighed and rolled them into a neat cylinder. He tucked them inside his cloak and looked up at Harry. “Why?”

Harry frowned. He could rarely hold on to humour anymore nowadays, and the thought made him irritable. “Just trust me, alright?”

Draco sent him a look that especially brought out the gleam residing in his irises. “Just take your word for it? Just like that?”

For a moment, Harry just looked at him, and Draco looked right back. “They’re instituting new policy,” Harry answered gruffly. “Next week. It will take them time to sort out the stupid little quirks. She can slip through more easily.”

Draco stood frozen for another few seconds, and then his shoulders actually slumped. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m… yeah.” He pulled off one glove and ran his fingers through his hair. Harry watched the progress of that light skin in the darkness. When Draco looked back up, he caught him staring. “I do take your word. Obviously.”

It was a skittish comment, an emotion Draco wasn’t used to voicing. Harry’s attention wavered, and suddenly he was looking past Draco to the mouth of the alleyway and the light beyond in the main street. 

“Shouldn’t I be happy?” Harry found himself saying. 

Draco looked at him sidelong. “What?”

“This.” Harry gestured. “You know. Because I’m…” Trying to help? Helping already? Draco’s expression was blank as he watched Harry’s hands move, and Harry gave up. It seemed like too much. Too much to explain. Too much that should just be understood. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

“There’s some sort of problem,” Draco hedged, eyes narrowed.

Harry looked skyward. “No. Never is.” 

* * *

He turned over and reached for Ginny, sleep-muddled and warm, and found the soft skin of her arm. She twitched, and _hmm_ ed, and her hand found his. Harry raised himself up over her and bent to catch her mouth with his, and for a moment, she kissed him back and the embrace was heated, and climbing. Harry gathered her to him, feeling her raise her leg along his side.

And then she pushed him back. “They’ll wake up,” she muttered.

Harry frowned, already a bit breathless. “They will not. James never did.”

Ginny rolled her eyes and yawned. “Harry, I’ve got to get up tomorrow. Early.”

“It’s Saturday tomorrow,” he said. “You’ve got the day off!”

“Well, then maybe I just don’t want to. Alright?”

He stared down at her and watched her eyes flick back and forth between his. “Then just say that,” he said in a low, terse voice. 

Her face flickered, just a momentary shiver. Harry exhaled hard. And pushed away from her, turning over and pulling the sheet up. It wasn’t cold. He was too hot for the duvet. And he didn’t care. He stared at the wall until her stillness became an exasperated slump into the mattress. She’d turned away from him, too. He could tell.

* * *

“This,” Draco said between long and somehow still elegant sips of his lager (and how exactly did one sip lager elegantly anyway?), “is surreal.”

Harry nearly took a swallow down the wrong pipe. He set his pint down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Surreal? It’s a bloody pub.”

“I would have said extremely surreal, only it’s much too commonplace to be in your presence nowadays.”

Harry rolled his eyes and turned away from Draco, picking up his drink again and concentrating on the smoky room instead. “So sorry to mess up your daily schedule. I might remind you that this was your idea.”

“Good notion, Potter. Pretend we aren’t here together.” 

Harry looked over in time to see Draco nod and turn his own body away, swivelling on his stool to face outward from the bar. They might as well have been two strangers in close proximity, but Harry wasn’t sure if Draco was joking or not. The look on his face a second later made Harry inclined to believe he wasn’t.

After a moment’s reflection, Harry shrugged and went back to his pint. “You’ve someone else, then?”

Draco was frowning down at something in the bottom of his glass. “I doubt I would be here if I hadn’t.”

But nothing else seemed to be immediately forthcoming. It was Draco’s way, anyway; he took his time divulging information, and he never relinquished all that much of it, though Harry had noticed that the amount of secrets revealed was increasing with each ‘client’ they had. Harry contemplated the amber glow of his pint. “It would be hard to leave one’s home, I think.” He gestured with his glass. “I would find it hard.”

Draco snorted. “How can it be your home when you clearly aren’t wanted?”

Harry nodded. He’d known the sensation of the non-home. There was still a great pit in his innards that had been dug and dug during the years of being a child in a home that was not ‘home.’ There had been nothing welcoming about that house, and there was nothing welcoming in the memories of it. It was a place that made him feel sick to his stomach.

Harry sighed. “Alright. Who is it, then?”

Draco looked moodily into his glass, swirling it gently between his fingers. His eyes rose to Harry’s once and then fell back down. He cleared his throat and sat up straight. “Never mind it tonight. I don’t feel like doing business over this pint.”

“As if you do business over any pint.”

“Still a prick, Potter?” Draco snapped.

Harry smirked. “Still me. However you interpret that is your issue, not mine.”

This time when Draco looked at him, his gaze held. “No,” he said after a moment. “You’re different now.” He took a swig, and Harry watched his throat ripple and tried to decide just how angry he should get over that comment, and Draco spoke again softly. “So am I.”

And that was the Founders’ truth of it.

Harry lazed over finishing his lager for as long as was appropriate, and then set the glass down and pushed back from the bar. “Should go. Ought to have been home by now, I’m sure.”

“That’s right, you’ve got another infant now, haven’t you?”

Harry turned to look at his companion. “Yes,” he said a little testily, wondering where this was going. Draco opened his mouth, a mouth that was just barely turning up at the corners, but then glanced Harry’s way and shut it. Cleared his throat.

“Yes, well. They do take energy.” A pause, then— “I’ve no idea how you manage two.”

Harry laughed this time. “I’ve no idea either.” He stood up from the stool and leaned over to grab his coat. As he did, Draco’s fingers touched his arm almost by accident, and both of them froze.

“I’ll owl you,” Draco said in a short, croaky tone. He cleared his throat again. “When I’ve someone else.”

Harry nodded jerkily, picked up his coat, and was out the door before he realised that Draco had just admitted to having no new client.

* * *

“He wants to see you,” Draco said a week later, his hands shoved into his pockets as the cold wind tore through their coats.

Harry clenched his hands around the rusted railing he was leaning on. “Absolutely not.” The Thames was a choppy, coal-grey sea.

“Potter—” Draco stopped, and in his voice went the slight whine of Harry’s name. Harry cringed inwardly, waiting for it to reassert itself. But Draco only took a deep breath. “Harry. I haven’t told him. He’s pragmatic. Likes to know all the angles, including the one involving his ticket out of the country.”

“First off, I’m not paying for any tickets,” Harry growled. “Second, you know the rules. I am not going to meet him.”

Draco came around in front of him, much closer than Harry had expected. “Harry, he won’t go through with it if he can’t see what’s happening.”

“Well, no one’s pressuring him to do anything, are they?” Harry hissed, leaning in. Draco’s head pulled back a touch. His eyes darted back and forth over Harry’s face.

Harry blinked and turned away. Began to walk. “I’ll get his papers. That’s all.”

“It’s Zabini, Harry.”

Harry shut his eyes. Salazar, were they _all_ leaving the country? He spun around, spreading his gloved hands. “Someone ought to write to Hogwarts and tell the Slytherins what sort of life they’ve in store!” he nearly shouted over the wind.

Draco took measured steps toward him, and Harry wasn’t sure why he stopped and waited. But he did, and eventually Draco was beside him again, hunching his slender shoulders under his dark coat. He swayed, and Harry had the strangest urge to grab his upper arms and steady him.

“Are you sick?” he asked instead. Draco rubbed his eyes.

“Just up late. My son has some sort of fever.”

Harry breathed out, then in again. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Draco shrugged it away almost visibly. “It’s not serious. We’ve seen the Healer already.” He shifted to his other foot. Frowned. “Look. Harry. The others have gone on much more faith than Blaise. I’ve been surprised, actually. But wouldn’t you want to know?”

“Absolutely. But I don’t really care about that at the moment.” Harry tilted his chin stubbornly, and Draco glared, but Harry cut off whatever words were on their way with a jerk of his hand. “No, _you_ think about it! I could lose my job. My job, Draco. My method of earning money to support my family. Not only that, but I have a feeling this sort of thing wouldn’t just go away afterward. And if you think my well-being is less important than Zabini’s, think again.”

Draco sighed. “I don’t think that. Merlin Almighty, Potter, you make me sound like some sort of— I understand the risks you’re taking. Don’t think I’m not appreciative.”

“You might show it once or twice,” Harry said bluntly. Draco’s eyes met his for a long moment. It was probably an unfair statement, but it wasn’t wholly unfair: Draco Malfoy had not changed enough to make displays of gratefulness a regular occurrence.

“You want me to fawn all over it?” Draco said quietly. “All over you? You happen to be doing the right thing, but don’t let me remind you of that. It’s not a big deal to you, who hasn’t been stuck on fifteen lists for nearly half a decade! The rest of the world just conveniently forgets what doesn’t smack it in the face everyday. But it hardly matters; I’ll just do it myself, with the loads of money my family has stashed— Oh, yes, that’s right, I forgot, I don’t have any fortune anymore! And perhaps I should be thanking you for that too!”

Harry stared at him, body locked, mind locked, and Draco stared back. Harry swallowed. “That’s what you think I’ve done.”

Abruptly, Draco was in motion again, raising his hands to rub his face and stepping back. Sighing. “No. No, Harry, that’s not it. Don’t know why I said it.”

 _Because part of you still thinks it,_ Harry almost offered. He exhaled and thought again about leaving. But what had he really done to prevent the loss of wealth to those who had been in the wrong shadow of the war, for good reason or bad? Of course he’d done quite a bit; they all had, and things were not nearly as bad as they could have been because of it. But surely… surely they could have done more. Done something to stop this downhill tumble from happening.

“I’m sorry,” came Draco’s voice.

Harry peered at Draco, surprised. And Draco just peered back, and suddenly Harry realised that they were both gripping the same three feet of railing, their hands centimetres apart. The Thames rushed by beneath them, misting moisture up through the air over their faces.

He didn’t owe Blaise Zabini anything, he knew that. He didn’t owe him a meeting, and he certainly didn’t owe him his relatively good life as compensation for any failings after the war. He supposed he was a saviour, but Hermione and Ron were wrong: he wasn’t Wizardom’s saviour. There were people he hadn’t ultimately saved.

But that was the thing; they were still people. They could save themselves, and there were various ways to go about that. Zabini wasn’t just a statistical problem that Harry had to deal with. Draco was right: if Harry had been in Zabini’s shoes, he’d want to know who was pulling which strings. He’d want to know if he was being safely tugged along. And Harry wasn’t above Zabini, by any stretch.

“I’ll meet him,” Harry muttered, gazing down at the ground and wondering again what he was doing. Then he pulled his head up and locked Draco’s gaze. “But if he says anything—”

“Don’t worry, Harry,” came the exasperated answer. “If he acts at all untoward, I’ll Obliviate him myself.”

Harry studied the other man and could find nothing resembling humour in his face. “You’re serious.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “It was a lot better when you knew less, Potter.”

It was almost over the top, but Harry still couldn’t be certain if a joke had been intended. And he didn’t think one had, frankly. Draco had livelihood to lose in this, too. “Our secret weapon is Obliviation,” he said in a bland tone. 

Draco nodded sharply, one eyebrow high on his forehead, and they walked several metres that way, in silence.

And then Draco let out a soft snort. “Well. I’m not sure I could, really.”

Harry smirked. “Still no good at it, are you?”

Draco spun on him with a glower. “What, you think Blaise Zabini would just sit still and let me scramble his mind? You’re more of a dolt than I thought. It’s a wonder you won at all eight years ago.”

Harry’s smirk became a full, if small, smile.

* * *

“Damn it, where are those nappies?”

It was too dark in the nursery, and James was yelling from his playpen about something or other, and they were late, late, late. Harry hitched Albus up with one arm and fumbled irately for the light switch with the other, finally smacking it on and flooding the room with light. Which prompted a loud hiccup from the baby in his arms.

Harry looked down at his son.

“Once upon a time, there was light,” he cooed, leaning to touch his son’s nose with his own. “Non-magical, brilliant, useful light. And Harry Potter saw that, for once, he didn’t have a single thing to do with any of it! And that was very, very good.”

Albus smiled, open-mouthed and toothless. It was impossible not to smile back. Harry bounced his son as he rummaged through the baby’s bag with his other hand. And located one nappy, three spelled cleaning towels, and two empty bottles, among other things. “We’ll be teaching you lots of Muggle things like that, I hope you know. Things other wizards and witches just won’t get, and just think of how weird that will make you in school! You’ll probably be a pariah!”

Albus gabbled something highly interesting back, if only Harry could understand it. He ruffled his son’s hair very gently and then located his wand and summoned more nappies from their hiding place (in the closet, it seemed) into the bag. “Come on, then, let’s go get your brother.”

For all James’ caterwauling, he was in decidedly good spirits, and Harry took his time wandering down to the front room, toddler in one arm and baby in the baby pack. He spent some minutes tucking James more tightly into his coat and securing a small hat on Albus’ head. It was amazing how quickly the baby had become used to Side-Along Apparition. The first few times with James had been a bloody nightmare, and it was only through Molly’s gentle urgings that he and Ginny and kept on with it. But Harry was much better at Apparating now, and if the experiences with Albus were any indication, Harry had become better at Side-Along as well. The trip only took a second, and then they were in a breezy park listening to the laughter of children and watching wizards and witches meander about in various states of relaxation. 

“Come on, then,” Harry said to James, “time to celebrate the end of the war.”

There were balloons, weirdly shaped ones that winked and bobbed and stuck their tongues out at their shrieking owners. Ice cream, for the braver sort on this cold day. And of course, there was music, though the sound was blessedly unimposing, drifting in over the breeze in wisping tones. It was still early in the afternoon, but Harry wasn’t planning on staying for the evening festivities or the big fireworks. The boys would be clambering for sleep by the time twilight was falling, and Harry knew his limits. He remembered the antics of the night crowd; he’d been part of it for nearly six years as it were. Ah, the relics of pre-parenthood. 

Hells, this night had probably caused parenthood at least once in his and Ginny’s case.

It turned out that James had a penchant for pixy pretzels, though Harry knew for a fact that he’d never seen them before in his wee life. Still, the yelling was not to be stopped; Harry paid for one medium-sized pixy pretzel, spelled away the rock salt, and kneaded it until it was soft enough for James to chew away at. Albus watched contemplatively but with no obvious thought for mimicking his brother, and Harry found a semi-quiet place on the lawn to spread out a small blanket and plop his children onto it. Albus lay on his back and squeezed at the sky with both hands, still-blue eyes open wide. By that time, James was covered with magical giggling pretzel bits.

It was a nice day, for once. No rain, very few clouds. It was also nice not to be bothered all that much, even though he could tell people recognised him. He’d picked his spot carefully; the pull of the games and activities and food further along were too much for the temptation of meeting a former hero. Most of the little kids didn’t know him anyway, and Harry was grateful for their yanking on their parents’ hands, impatient to be gone. He did enjoy seeing Neville on his way about the grounds— his friend had put together the small hedge maze and ‘ferocious plant jungle’ up the hill— and at one point, Luna Lovegood wandered over out of nowhere, as if she’d popped directly out of the sky, to tickle Albus’ toes for several minutes.

It gave Harry a bit of a start to look up after almost an hour and find Draco Malfoy directly in his line of sight. The man was dressed in crisp black trousers and an equally crisp white shirt with long sleeves. His hair was a golden crown atop his head, and he’d tucked an expensive-looking black cloak about his shoulders. If he’d had longer hair, he might’ve looked like… Harry blinked the thought away and just stared for a moment, because something was off-kilter about him, he had something in his arms—

He had some _one_ in his arms.

Harry had never actually seen Scorpius Malfoy. He was indeed young, as small as Albus but with a shock of almost-white hair fluffed in a halo about his forehead where his little brown cap pushed it down. His face was pale, his eyes large and shadowed underneath. Harry remembered the fever and sat up straighter. The baby was bundled in soft blankets that trailed almost aesthetically over Draco’s forearms and right shoulder. As Harry watched, Draco reached up and touched the cap back into place on his baby’s head with a light nudge, and it was right then that it hit Harry: Draco was a father, too.

He’d known it, of course. But there was something different about seeing it, seeing himself in Draco. Unexpected heat filled his chest, a little soft puff that trembled and faded again.

By that time, of course, Draco had seen him as well. His face was hard to read at the distance, but his eyes tracked over Harry several times as he spoke to the woman behind him, who Harry knew to be Astoria Greengrass. She looked more than a little put out, and Harry wondered first if she wanted to be here, and then took a mental step back and reminded himself of the bigger picture, and her family. He remembered that he’d never asked after Daphne and Astoria’s mother, and was not surprised that his lack of inquiry bothered him.

Draco wandered away from his wife’s side with a slow sort of jaunt, and Astoria made no move to recall him or even follow him. Instead she went the other way, back up the hill toward the larger crowds, and Draco approached Harry’s blanket, his son still tucked in his arms. Harry watched him come closer, thinking detachedly that he wasn’t sure what to say. But Draco started things first, and simply.

“Harry.” A nod. Scorpius peered out from beneath his cap with dark, dark eyes.

“Draco. Hello.” The feeling of looking up at the other man was prickling at him. Harry made sure James and Albus were settled, and then pushed himself to his feet and stuck his hands in his jean pockets. Draco’s gaze fell on each of his children in turn, and there was awareness there, and curiosity. But it was all veiled. At last Draco met his eyes again and hefted his son a little higher.

“Is Scorpius feeling better, then?” Harry asked.

Draco looked at his son immediately, and this time his gaze did not waver at all. His mouth bent into a faint smile. “Yes, he’s doing better. Still not completely over it, but on his way.”

Harry smiled too, feeling relaxed and weird. “Couldn’t miss the celebration, could you?” he murmured to the blond baby. Scorpius pushed his face into Draco’s chest. But a second later, he’d turned his head just enough to look at Harry out of one eye.

“He’s intelligent,” Harry found himself saying, and then wondered where that had come from. Draco nodded. 

“He is. Already.” 

“Makes sense.” It was a little bit shocking to hear the words come so naturally. Harry looked up and found Draco staring at him.

“Thank you,” the man said after a moment.

Harry shook himself, and the shiver nearly got away from him to quake down his entire body. He cursed himself for not bringing another jacket. At least his kids were dressed plenty warmly. “So. I don’t think I’ve seen you at these… functions. You know.” He gestured, and could almost hear the raised eyebrow from his companion.

“We come to them.”

“Do you really?” Harry asked sarcastically, turning to face the man. Draco smirked at his tone.

“Why, yes, Harry, just two months ago we were at Hogwarts, taking in the new addition like good little former students. Weren’t you there?”

Harry rolled his eyes. Of course he and Ginny had been there. It had been a dreary, dull, tiring get-together, and he’d only run into the people who seemed to know him. Not all that many people _he_ knew or could call friends. Not counting Ron and Hermione, naturally. As usual, the children had decided when the fun was over, and Harry had been only too glad to escape the castle and all its memories— not to mention the inexplicable betrayal he’d felt upon seeing the newer, less fitting sections. But he hadn’t seen Draco there. Then again, he hadn’t seen much of anyone he knew.

Harry shrugged, feeling the strange tinge of embarrassment. “Everyone was there, then, I guess.”

Draco let out a soft sniff. “I certainly hadn’t been stared at so much in years. Not like that.”

Harry hadn’t expected to hear such an intimacy coming from Draco Malfoy, no matter how used to each other they were becoming. Harry gazed at him without registering he was doing it, and watched Draco’s face pink. The man shifted Scorpius’ position so he was resting upright against his chest, facing away from Harry. “So. Your manners haven’t improved at all, Potter.”

“What?”

Draco gestured at his sons on the blanket. “I’m sure I could use my intellectual superiority to reason who these smallish sorts might be, but to tell the truth, I’ve really no idea. For all I know, the newspapers have completely fabricated your children, and parade around pictures of random orphans in your company so as to—”

Harry cut him off. “ _Draco,_ this is James. And that’s Albus Severus.”

Draco nodded down at the two boys, who of course paid him no attention whatsoever. He patted Scorpius’ back and took a moment to tuck the blanket closer about his throat. “That one looks like you.”

“Who, Albus?” Harry glanced down at his youngest son and felt a wave of fondness flutter through his heart. “Yeah. Yeah, he actually looks very much like me. When I was about his age.”

“And that one,” Draco said, lifting his chin toward the almost-toddler sitting precariously on the blanket, “looks like your wife.”

He was right, of course: James had Ginny’s temperate nose and fine eyebrows. Harry laughed and bent to ruffle the boy’s hair. “You should see him when he’s in a snit. He’s got her pout.”

“A fine inheritance,” Draco said blandly. But he was smiling, very slightly.

There was a melodic shriek up the hill, and both of them looked up to see a shower of crystalline blue fountaining through the air. James’ head turned and Albus’ eyes opened wide. Harry knelt down on the blanket, placing one hand on James’ back to steady him as he wobbled. “They’ve started the crackers.”

“There goes the party,” Draco griped.

Harry found himself grinning up at the other man. It was such an unexpected, comical, tender picture: Draco stood against the backdrop of pearl-blue sky, a soft green blanket draped about him, and Scorpius’ fuzzy white hair poking out of the top. The man’s face was calm, his profile sharp and yet passive. His hand rubbed absently up and down his son’s back as he watched the second cracker go off in a flood of orange.

“You like firecrackers,” Harry observed abruptly. Draco’s lips pursed. 

“I did as a child,” he said shortly. He shrugged as gently as he could so as not to upset the baby in his arms. “Some things don’t know when to pack up and go.”

“Well,” Harry ventured, standing again and brushing off his jeans, “it’s not a bad thing to take with you.”

“I know,” Draco answered simply. Harry watched him carefully. Sometimes surprises had no end, he thought.

They observed the next cracker, and the next one, without comment, and then Draco exhaled suddenly. “Well. This actually saves me an owl, I suppose.”

“Oh?” Harry said warily.

“I’ve news.” A sparking pillar went up with a fizz, throwing golden motes high into the air, accompanied by purple showers that fell like water. The crowd of children and adults cheered. Draco swayed sideways, rocking his son and moving within whispering distance. “Blaise’ll meet us at the Harpy’s Head tomorrow. If you’re still willing.”

Harry frowned vaguely across the field. His belly’s churning took a decisively downward turn. “You know I’m not,” was all he said, and Draco did not contradict. But it wasn’t a change of plans, and Harry knew Draco understood that.

“Eight in the evening,” Draco continued. “I’d wear a roomy cloak if I were you.”

* * *

Harry was on the verge of backing out of the meeting right up until the very moment when he approached the dimly lit table where Blaise Zabini sat. Draco stopped just beside him, and the smoke of pipes and badly mixed magical drinks rolled around them. The pub was dingy and dark, and perfect for such an entourage as theirs. Zabini looked up at them both with penetratingly dark eyes, staring too long at first Harry and then his companion, and Draco took a seat. Harry followed less easily, tugging the hood of his cloak more tightly around his face.

Salazar, what a lie to tell Ginny. ‘Drinking with mates from work’ was not exactly off the beaten path in this case, but it still tasted very bad in the back of his throat.

Zabini was the first to speak. “I don’t know if I believe it.” He was staring at Harry again.

“You do,” Draco said in a low voice. “Who else would I bring?”

Zabini eyed his former housemate for a second, and then gave a sharp nod. He leaned back and raised his smoking goblet to his lips. “You’re going to get me out?” he asked Harry, turning his weighty gaze his way once more.

“No, you’re going to get yourself out,” Harry corrected. And didn’t offer anything more. There was little he felt like explaining here; everything seemed to contain too much information. But Zabini only nodded, looking contemplative, and surprisingly, nervous.

“Fine. Should I bother to keep my guard up or is there any point at all anymore?” the man asked.

Draco’s hand darted across the table and touched down right next to Zabini’s. “You think I’d do something like that to you?” he snapped. There was something almost acidic in his tone, some hurt that made Harry look his way.

Zabini raised his chin, but his eyes remained on the table in front of them for some seconds. Harry thought he was looking at Draco’s hand. One of Zabini’s fingers twitched. “No,” he sighed at last. When he met Draco’s eyes, it was that shifting weight again, almost like a thud of tumblers locking into place behind a cell door. “You wouldn’t.”

And there was something in the way Blaise was looking at Draco, the way Draco’s eyes flickered and fixed over and over again, that made nervousness grind to life in Harry’s gut. He recognised that look, but it felt especially obvious to him in the thick smoke of the pub. He looked away, unsettled by it, and also by the way his chest clenched. There was more being said than he could physically hear, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know it for what it really was.

Draco’s gaze lingered a little too long on his former housemate. Finally he let out a long breath and sat back. His hand slid away across the table, and Harry watched Zabini’s fingers clench slowly.

“So we’re agreed, then,” Draco said. “This man gets you what you need to get out.” He gestured between Harry and Zabini. Zabini’s mouth thinned. 

“Why should he go against his own job? Why in all hells should Harry Potter help us all get out of the country?”

“Maybe I want you gone,” Harry offered blithely, and both sets of eyes fixed on him again. He shrugged and leaned forward. “Zabini. What’s in it for me if I turn you in?”

“Satisfaction,” was the immediate answer, but Draco scoffed.

“Have you _seen_ Pansy lately?” he said. “Daphne, perhaps? Been reading the articles about them in the papers?”

Zabini grimaced. “No.”

“Because there are none.” Draco’s shoulders hunched as he leaned forward conspiratorially. “He’s not turned them in. He’s not turned me in. And he’d lose his job if he turned himself in. What more is there to ponder?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” There was something in Zabini’s narrowed eyes that Harry just wasn’t getting. Or willing to get. “There might be something else to think about, don’t you think, Draco?”

Draco’s whole face stiffened. It was a very strange thing to see. But suddenly there was no openness left in those features. “I wouldn’t know,” he grated.

For an instant, Zabini almost looked sad. Then he sighed and drank from his goblet again, and the moment slipped on past. “Out of the goodness of your heart, then, Potter?”

Harry chewed his lip until he could find no excuse not to answer, and said, “Partially. The law is wrong. Whatever my personal feelings about those it affects.”

Zabini snorted. “You don’t hate me. You never did.”

Harry frowned at him. “No.”

And Zabini looked at Draco again and there it was, that odd unspoken passing of something. It occurred to Harry that Zabini had watched most, if not all, of Draco’s movements throughout their stilted rendezvous. 

“You should be more careful,” Zabini murmured. He was looking at Harry once again, searching him infinitely.

Harry turned away and cleared his throat. He was sure they were being _very_ careful about all of this. But Zabini’s expression and manner toward Draco made a deeper part of Harry twist. He didn’t know how to read that expression, but he did know it was professing more than a general discontent over his state.

“And you don’t need to worry about that,” Draco said smoothly, straightening his shoulders. “We’ve a lot to talk about, and some of it I’d rather do through owl than here where prying ears may be listening. But you’d better tell him where you’re heading at least, Blaise.”

Zabini looked as if he didn’t want to do any such thing, but he spoke anyway. “Spain. Northern area. I have family there.”

Harry nodded, struggling to draw himself back to the moment. In the end it did not take all that long to impart the necessary information, and he had a feeling that his straightforward manner had ended up easing Zabini’s nerves a little by the time Draco got too fidgety to remain in the pub. Draco’s housemate had at least stopped glaring at him. But there was still that pensive gaze underneath it all. Harry had the sense that he was being figured out in silence across the beer-stained pub table.

“I think it’s time to leave,” Draco murmured presently, when the door began to swing open every few seconds to admit more staggering patrons. Zabini said nothing, but gathered his hood up over his head again and rose from the table. Harry, who had never removed his hood to begin with, got up more slowly and followed the other two through the crowded, ale-soaked room and out the door into the chilly evening. Outside, Draco made an immediate left to avoid the laughing groups of approaching people, and made for the recesses of Knockturn with Zabini and Harry behind him.

“So,” Draco said at last. “You’re satisfied?”

Zabini nodded without speaking. Harry nodded as well.

“Then Harry will go to work, as he is so very good at it. And you’ll hear from me when we have the proper items for you. Until then, just be yourself. I know I will be.”

“Draco,” Zabini said, an urgent edge slipping under the name. And then he stopped. Draco turned toward him, brows creased and face lightly lined. Zabini’s throat worked as he swallowed. The man glanced at Harry and then grabbed the edge of Draco’s cloak in one hand and pulled him closer. Draco leaned in, eyes widening, and Zabini said something into his ear, something very soft. Draco’s body went very still; his eyes darkened. His hands settled on Zabini’s chest and rested there, and then in the next moment pushed them gently apart.

“I know,” was what Harry heard Draco mutter. A sigh. “I know.”

Zabini backed away as if he were moving through a thick sludge. His eyes stayed with Draco until he was several feet away, and when they turned to Harry at last, Harry was startled by the near-pain he saw there. Zabini blinked, and it was gone.

“Potter.” Zabini nodded to him, and turned, heading up the dark alley and disappearing around the first corner.

* * *

It was within two days that Harry hit his first big snag. It wasn’t actually that large, but Zabini would need extra paperwork because his choice of destination, Spain, had its own travel issues stemming from the war and the current government. There were forms Zabini would need, Spanish ones, and Harry would have a hard time getting them before the week was out.

Which meant Zabini would have to wait to leave again. And Harry might have to call in some favour that would draw attention to the whole thing.

 _You’ll have to come to the office,_ he quilled, standing over the stack of papers he’d been thumbing through. _I can have you in as an official visitor; I’ve my own private Floo line. We’ve a problem. The destination is “Potter at Ministry.”_

He ignited a fire in the hearth and waited only about thirty minutes before Draco puffed out of it, stumbling uncharacteristically. He glanced around the office with quick jerks of his head, and Harry had the sense that Draco was checking for threats. It reminded Harry of how he’d felt in the woods during the last year of the war: constantly peering into the shadows.

The feeling faded.

“You’re not allowed outside the office, I’m afraid,” Harry said in greeting. “I’ll have to sign for some paperwork from Spain, or Zabini will be held up on their side. They’ve nearly the same policies we do. He should feel right at home.”

Draco didn’t answer, and Harry finally got a good look at him. His face looked a little paler than it had before, and even though his robes were as immaculate as they always were, there was something unkempt about him. Hurried. Harry’s gaze fell to Draco’s hands, and he saw that the man’s fingers, instead of hanging loosely at his sides, were curled almost into his palms.

“I’ll… need some information,” Harry tried again. “If he’s familial connections in Spain, as he says, then we’ll need them. It’ll be like a CV. The more names on the bottom of the document, the better.” Harry frowned and rose from his chair. “Everything alright? Scorpius taken a turn for the worse?”

Draco didn’t answer for several seconds; he just stared at the top of the desk with eyes that were slightly too wide. Harry leaned forward, and Draco snapped into movement, stepping back abruptly enough to startle Harry.

“No,” was all Draco said. “He hasn’t.”

Harry licked his lips, feeling off-balance. “How is he?”

“He’s as well as can be expected,” was the distant reply. 

“What does that mean? Draco.”

Draco looked at him keenly for a moment, and then sighed. And then it was as if there were nothing wrong. “He’s fine, Harry. He’ll be fine. Now let’s see to this bit of extra nuisance, shall we?”

“Sure,” Harry said after a moment. He drew a breath and leaned over his desk. “Sure.”

 

~tbc~


	3. Ten of Swords

_There, the swords, and there, the one who has fallen beneath their razor edge. The betrayer lurks here, and the final breath of misery unlooked for. I am sorry, my child; there is no good in this card for you._

 

“Theodore Nott.” Draco’s eyes never broke from Harry’s.

Harry lowered his gaze at last and sat back. “That… could present a problem.”

“A bigger problem than all the other four?” Draco sounded incredulous, and put that way, Harry could hardly blame him.

“He has a record,” Harry insisted. “He’s already been accused of minor crimes.”

“And is there proof of any of it?” Draco countered vehemently. “Any shred of evidence that he’s really done anything they say he’s done?”

Harry leaned back, frowning at Draco. “He a friend of yours or something?”

Draco blinked. His mouth twitched downward. “No,” he sighed. And then the vehemence returned, as did the intent gaze. “But there are many who have been treated unfairly, who got worse than they deserve.”

Harry snorted softly. “That is a matter of personal opinion,” he muttered. And exhaled. “Alright, no. I doubt we’ve any concrete evidence. If we had, you can be sure we would have dragged him in by now.”

Draco nodded. “Precisely.”

“Precisely nothing! You think getting Zabini out of the country was hard? That was nothing compared to the hurdles Theodore Nott would have to jump. For one thing, unlike the others, he’d definitely be recognised by any number of travel patrols if he met them. For another, his name’s not just going to sit comfortably on a sheet of parchment like Pansy Parkinson’s. His record’s different. They’ll know him, you can trust me on that.”

Draco waved his hand. “Let him worry about that. There are plenty of ways to change one’s appearance, you’ll remember. I know for a fact that _you’ve_ had extensive experience with Polyjuice, Harry.”

Harry felt his cheeks heat, and Draco smirked. But Harry wasn’t finished yet. And never mind that there were ways to detect that sort of tampering, even from the best tamperers. “Well, maybe you’ve thought ahead to the part where they apprehend him and he tells them exactly who gave him the means to depart the country!”

This time Draco coloured. His frown appeared, with a subtle, deeper edge that Harry couldn’t define. “He won’t. And you’ll have to trust me on _that_.”

Harry wasn’t sure why he should. In fact, he was very sure that he shouldn’t. But they weren’t at the stage where he’d have to worry about that sort of thing yet. There was still time to talk Draco out of this. It was comforting, a little more comforting than was warranted, but… Harry was willing to take the gifts he was offered.

“He’s approached you, then?” Harry said warily. Draco looked at him again.

“Yes. Actually, he’s been approaching me for a few weeks. It was just never truly feasible in my mind until now.”

“Why?”

Draco frowned vaguely. “He didn’t seem that serious. Serious enough to get out, I mean,” he added when Harry opened his mouth. “But I was mistaken. He’s quite serious.”

“Well, I’m not meeting him,” Harry interjected firmly. “And that’s not open for debate.”

Draco’s frown became oddly pronounced. “I wouldn’t want you to meet with him.” His shoulders twitched slightly. “You can do what needs to be done without all that.”

* * *

“Let me guess: you’re not home this evening.”

“Gin. I told you work has been demanding.”

“Yes, but… Harry, I hardly think the boys recognise you anymore.”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic.”

“Fine. Only, I think I hardly recognise you, and that’s _not_ me being dramatic. Think about it.”

* * *

It had started with one single sentence from Draco: “I think I’d like a drink.”

Harry had not been able, or willing, to come up with an excuse to argue.

It was the Green Dragon they went to, a Wizarding hole-in-the-wall in Camden Town with soft lights and a cosy warmth. The bartender was a cheery young woman with a head of glowing curls and a speed that had Harry three ales deep within the first half hour. Draco was not far behind, and Harry suspected that they were equally bad at holding their liquor when it came right down to it.

“Sometimes I hate my life, Harry,” Draco drawled, swirling his drink in a lazy, outstretched hand. He’d been throwing back more cocktails than Harry’s brews, and he looked especially at ease with a delicate glass between his long fingers. “Hate it. Do you see?”

Harry nodded. “I’ve had my moments. Oh, don’t look at me like I’m a child, there are things I’ve hated about my life.”

“Well, you’ve certainly been threatened enough,” Draco mused, nodding slowly. He pointed at Harry, leaning back over the table as if he’d some secret to tell. “Gets to you, that does. Constantly, all the time, you don’t ever really escape, do you?”

“No. You don’t.”

“Don’t sleep, don’t eat much… It’s just a little compacted world all of a sudden. And you’re at the centre.” Draco glared at his empty glass and signalled for another. 

“I guess you would know, wouldn’t you?” Harry said thoughtfully, thinking of a dark manor full of uninvited guests, including a child ordered to grow up too soon.

Draco stared at him for so long and so intently that Harry felt the need to elaborate. “You know,” he said, reaching for his ale with a slightly unsteady hand, “during the war. I think you had as much pressure as I did. Frankly.”

For an instant, Draco’s shoulders shook and he looked away. His throat moved as he swallowed. Then he’d cocked his head and the uneven smile was back. “Salazar, you’ve no idea at all. Can you imagine? ‘Oh bother, do we give Voldemort the periwinkle room or the lilac one for his visit?’”

Harry choked on his ale and thunked his glass down on the table to keep from dropping it. The liquid inside sloshed up and over the lip, splattering in several directions. Harry felt several large drops hit him in the face.

“Fuck’s sake, Draco, _don’t_. Unless you want to buy the next round!”

Draco was laughing quite hard, and Harry gestured at him with his still-half-full tumbler. “Oh, so funny. Shut up, you.”

“Wait, wait, you’ve got…” Draco’s lips parted in a wide grin and he reached across the table with one hand. “Here. Splashed on yourself.”

His fingertips touched Harry’s cheek, right below his temple, and smoothed a cooling drop of liquid away. The streak of ale felt cold against Harry’s skin and he sucked in a breath. Draco’s fingers stopped moving; they rested there, warm and soft on his skin. 

Draco stared at him. 

Harry could hear himself breathing, quickened puffs of air between his lips. He could feel every one of Draco’s fingertips, three small spots of pressure on his face. Draco’s cheeks pinked just a touch. His hand trembled; Harry felt the quiver against his skin. Draco’s thumb came up and brushed lightly over his cheek, and then his hand pulled away.

“You’re clumsy, Potter, that’s what you are.” Draco busied himself with the placement of his coaster, and Harry found himself a little short of breath, and a little confused. 

How drunk was he? Perhaps it was time to leave. It wasn’t that late, was it? And he had things to do, they both had things to do, and… there were reasons not to be here.

Harry couldn’t think of any of them.

The bartender arrived with Draco’s next beverage and took a measure of Harry’s. “You’ll be wanting another, I think?” she said with a coy grin.

Harry nodded, feeling his cheeks heating for other reasons that he hadn’t quite sorted out yet. “Yeah, but just one. Think I’m already over my limit.”

Draco was smirking. “Think you passed your limit after number one.”

“You can be a real arse, you know that?” Harry said, more soberly than he’d meant to, and there it was, Draco’s eyes caught his again, and that strange roiling he’d felt in another pub weeks ago flowed up out of the recesses of Harry’s body and tingled at his senses. 

“Well. I apologise,” Draco said politely.

“And so do I, before you say anything.” Harry tapped his fingers against his glass. Suddenly it wasn’t so very hard to look Draco in the eye. The man’s smile turned oddly fond. Almost yearning. He moved as if to reach across the table again.

When his hand slipped back, Harry frowned. “What? Got more ale on me, have I?”

Draco opened his mouth, closed it, and then smiled again. “No,” he said quietly.

* * *

“So, I’m actually on track for once,” Harry said into the Floo. “Do you want to go get lunch?”

Ginny rubbed a hand over her forehead and sighed, looking down into their hearth. “I can’t, Harry. James has some sort of cold, at least that’s what Mum thinks.”

“What? Is he alright?”

“She took him to the park this morning and he was fine. I’m sure he was fine when I dropped him off.” She looked more stressed than usual, her brow lined. “But now he’s mopey and tired. I think it might just be his mood, but Mum—”

“I can Floo the Healer,” Harry offered. “Try to get him in today.”

“Fine,” Ginny answered, sighing. “He’s still at the Burrow. Personally, I’d like to spend the lunch hour napping, if that’s quite alright with you.”

Harry frowned. “Of course it’s alright with me. You don’t need to snap.”

Ginny’s face withered even further. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m just… very tired, Harry.”

“Alright,” he said stiffly. And then, more calmly, “Look, go to bed. The house will be quiet for another few hours. Get some rest.”

“Alright,” was her answer. Harry waited until the Floo line on her end began to fade, and pulled his head out of his office fireplace when he could no longer see their sitting room.

* * *

The owl from Draco directed him to the Quidditch pitch, despite the agreement not to go there again. Harry Apparated after work, before he had to be home for dinner, and found the pitch full of noisy, cold wind. The sun was just starting to disappear under the horizon when he heard the faint crack of another Apparition, the sound almost disappearing under the rush of air. Draco made his way over the grass with steady, slow steps, his arms tucked into his robes, making him look like a swaying pillar of black below the neck. 

“Hi,” Harry said, and Draco stopped a few feet from him. He looked very tired. His face was pale and his eyes had a vaguely unfocussed appearance. Not as if he were not paying attention, but rather as if his attention were being drawn in several directions.

“This isn’t a good idea,” Draco finally said, shifting restlessly. Harry waited for an explanation, but Draco was staring past him, unfocussed again.

Harry reached, touched the other man’s arm, and drew back. “What?” he asked softly.

Draco’s eyes had followed the motion of Harry’s hand as he pulled away, and now they rose to his face. “Helping Nott. It isn’t… I think you’re risking too much.”

Harry had to pause and digest, not because it was incomprehensible but because he was still getting used to this facet of Draco. This concern. “Let me worry about the risk, alright?”

Draco shrugged and for a moment he looked utterly miserable. The other man frowned, turning his head so only his profile was visible to Harry. “Well, maybe you don’t fully understand what you’re risking, Potter.”

Harry considered, chewing over his words and not finding anything satisfactory. Nothing that would make Draco let his irritation go, nothing that would forward the reasoning at all because Draco’s very words spoke of a desire to be obstinate, and Harry knew how that sort of conversation was likely to go.

“I think I know what I’m risking,” Harry answered moodily. “I’m doing it for you anyway.”

And— it was the truth. His own words moved him deep down inside: Harry hadn’t been so surprised by and so sure about something for a long while.

Draco stared at him. Harry sighed.

“Look. He’s paying you, yeah?”

Hesitation. Draco’s cheeks went red. “Yes,” he affirmed in a low voice.

“You need the money. I know you do.”

A deeper flush. “Yes, I do.”

“Then let me help you. Alright?” Harry felt a little foolish arguing. He wondered how these words would sound if they were spoken to him, and he hoped he didn’t come across as melodramatic. 

Draco looked as if he wanted to argue again, as if the words were trying to burst from him. His jaw stiffened noticeably and he jerked his head, glaring in the direction of the setting sun for several seconds. His shoulders gave an odd shudder and then hunched. Draco’s brow smoothed gradually as he stared at the orange horizon. 

“Fine,” he whispered. 

And that was all he said, even though Harry tried a couple times to start another conversation before they parted.

* * *

_I’ve got them. Just come through, there’s no one here. I’ve taken down the security ward._

* * *

Harry rubbed his eyes and motioned the light globe closer with his wand. It rolled unsteadily through the air until it was nearly above him, beaming white light over the parchments Harry held. They were all in order, all signed, all stamped, all sealed. It had taken him the better part of two weeks, but there they were, and with any luck, he’d not have to look at them again after tonight. Draco was undoubtedly receiving his missive now, and preparing to come through his office Floo— left burning for just that purpose. Then Harry could hand the documents over and be done with the entire incident.

The Auror wing had been empty for hours, all the lights put out, all the desks and offices vacant. The place felt unnaturally large in the darkness, devoid of voices and the constant rustle of movement. Harry stared absently into the dim corners, tapping his fingers on the armrest beneath them.

It was strange to consider, but he supposed one day— probably soon— there would be a lack of prospective escapees. If and when that happened, what were they expected to do? What was _he_ expected to do? There would be little reason for Draco to contact him again. There would be little reason to see him at all. It had been the state of things for years before all of this, but now Harry almost couldn’t imagine it. He’d been in contact with Draco nearly every day for the past four months, in some form or another. He’d seen several sides of the man that he hadn’t known existed, namely the tenderness and concern he kept for his infant son, and Harry wasn’t used to having his core shaken like that, but it had happened many times lately. He could remember details about Draco’s face and walk, and he was having a hard time explaining that to himself.

But he could say for certain that knowing was comforting. Very comforting. Almost as if he had another hidden wall to lean against. Something else sure in the world. It sounded trite when he said it aloud, but he’d become accustomed to being with Draco. And inexplicably irritated when he wasn’t around.

Worried about him and his son.

A soft rush filled the air, and Harry straightened, the back of his neck prickling for just an instant. Then memory kicked in; that was the Floo. Harry set the stack of parchment down with a sigh and closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair. It felt odd not to have anything left to do, but he’d prepared everything to the best of his knowledge. If Draco ended up needing anything more, Harry wasn’t sure where they’d start. And a significant part of him didn’t like the idea of Draco carrying on with this one again. The man was on edge, that much was obvious, more so than with any of the others. Harry was sure it had to do with Scorpius’ illness, which was still lingering. And that made Harry’s head hurt. The idea of one of his babies, sick…

Draco needed a break. Perhaps, after all this was done, they could—

A step broke the silence, and Harry turned in his chair, already picturing the angular face under golden hair.

And found dark, thick strands framing a slender countenance. Black eyes.

Harry jumped to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?” he cried.

Theodore Nott turned almost lazily to him, as if he’d been admiring the décor and Harry’s presence had been included in that category. He smiled, a comfortable half-twist to his thin mouth. He spread his hands, one of which held his wand in a loose grasp; the other, strangely, held a folder of papers. “I was invited, Potter.”

Harry knew the odds of him getting his wand out before Nott could fire off a spell or two were not very good. But he wasn’t an Auror for his health. It took him a shard of a second to summon as much wandless energy as he could and send it careening Nott’s way. The man swayed, blue eyes widening, and Harry shot his hand out. “Accio wand!”

His wand smacked into his palm painfully, and Harry swung it up, seeing Nott’s fly forward—

“Stop! Harry!” yelled a voice.

Harry looked over— not the best idea, but some instincts were insurmountable. His heart battered his ribcage in one relieved tremor. Draco stood in the doorway, wand raised and pointed at them both. Harry exhaled. “Draco, thank Merlin. I’ve no idea how he got in.”

And then Draco’s eyes hardened just a little bit more. And his wand swivelled, tracking away from Nott and fixing on Harry.

Nott’s grin widened.

“I let him in,” Draco said in a low voice. He flicked the tip of his wand very slightly. “Put it down, Potter.”

It wasn’t clicking. Harry blinked once and stared at the steady tip of Draco’s wand. Pointed directly at his chest. Draco’s wrist shone pale in the dim light where his sleeve had slipped back to reveal it. Even from that distance, Harry could see that his tendons were tight, his fingers clenched.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice coming a little faster than expected. Nott hadn’t said a word. Hadn’t moved except to smile. Draco did not even spare the other man a glance.

“Put your wand down.” The words suddenly had a harsh edge, sharp and deliberate. 

Harry’s every instinct screamed against it. Not before Theodore Nott, not here in the Ministry’s Auror offices, and not when he should have had the upper hand. But his stomach gave a twinge and began to settle, deeper and deeper into an ache.

“You used me,” he whispered. Draco’s eyes narrowed and for a second, Harry thought he was going to lower his arm. But the shiver was only a prelude to Draco striding forward, fast enough to startle, and jerking his wand at Harry.

 _“I said drop it,”_ he hissed. Harry heard finality there, and his confusion rushed in like a wild sea, twisting into the hollows and crannies of his head. His arm shook, and he lowered his wand slowly.

Draco’s shoulders rose and fell once, and then he dropped his chin. “On the floor.”

Harry’s fingers closed tighter around the length of his wand. He looked fixedly at Draco’s face, searching for some hint, some sign that there was more to this. But he could find nothing, and then Draco’s lip gave a hard, sudden curl, and Harry released his grip, letting the wand fall from his fingers to clatter on the floor.

Nott moved then, three confident steps into Harry’s sphere. He bent and lifted the wand from the cement, turning it in his hand. “Beautiful. As I’d always suspected.”

Draco made a strange sound. He stalked forward and pulled the wand from Nott’s grasp. “Give me that.”

Nott raised his eyebrows, and Harry thought he saw a smirk. But he couldn’t process, and it vanished as Nott turned away. The man walked the short distance toward where the rows and rows of shelves outside the main offices began and thumbed a book. Somewhere in the back of Harry’s mind, something whispered, _stop him. Stop him._ But he felt drained; he hadn’t the energy for movement. Draco was right there, not ten feet from him, and the proximity couldn’t have felt more different. He’d never felt such a hollowness between them before, not even… 

Not even during school. There had always, always been something there.

Nott was moving again, touching the backs of the books one by one with a single forefinger. Anger flared hotly within Harry; with one eye on the wand Draco still had pointed at him, he opened his mouth.

“Get your hands off those.”

Nott raised his eyebrows, but complied. He turned and came away from the shelves, toward Harry and Draco. He shoved his hands into his pockets, and that careless movement only fed the fury in Harry. He clenched his hands at his sides.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Potter.” Nott’s tone sounded bored. “I came all this way to receive your help, and there you are with white knuckles.”

“And why in the known world should I help you?” Harry growled. “That part’s just not clear to me.”

Nott shrugged his shoulders as if stumped. “Draco tells me it’s in your nature to be helpful. I’d hate to be disappointed at this juncture.”

“ _Draco_ is mistaken.” It was out before he realised, and both the other men looked at him. Harry found he was holding his breath, and not because of Nott, but because of the strange, nervous look in Draco’s grey eyes. But then Nott spoke again.

“You’ll help me,” Nott said in a steely voice, “because if you try anything, Potter, I’ll make your family suffer.”

Harry’s mouth dried. “That’s bollocks,” he hissed, but Nott only looked at him.

“Little baby, yes? Brand new. And you’ve got another son, so I’m sure you could stand to part with one if you absolutely had to, but let’s be adults, Potter, why make your noble Gryffindor wife suffer any more than she has to?”

“What the hell are you saying?” It was ludicrous. Absolute nonsense, there was no way in all hells that Theodore Nott could do anything like what he was implying. But it seemed he wasn’t finished.

“You’re giving me those papers. And you’re going to mark me in your little book.”

 _I would have done that anyway!_ Harry wanted to yell. Gods, there was no one less deserving, but there it was. He would have. He’d promised to do so before all of this.

“I’m not done,” Nott snapped. “We’re going to destroy my records, too.”

Harry couldn’t help it; he looked to Draco. For help, for… something. And found Draco looking back at him from behind a blank mask. Harry swallowed and forced his attention back to the more urgent problem. And registered the folder Nott held with a sick thud in his gut. A folder of papers; it had to be Nott’s records. Taken from his office desk on their way through. Draco… would have recognised them for what they were. “Impossible,” Harry managed out of a bone-dry throat. “They’ll see it immediately. They check those records. There’s no way to hide that sort of tampering, not for you.”

“Let them see,” Nott said smoothly. “I’ll be gone already, and I don’t envy the person who has to chase me. Or the one who has to reconstruct the criminal records in order to do it properly.”

Founders. He’d thought hard about this. Because it was true; the governments of the other countries wouldn’t put up with an unsupported manhunt right under their noses. Not without documentation. Which England wouldn’t have. They might find him. Eventually, after years of chasing and hunting.

“No,” Harry whispered. His fingers clenched into his palms painfully. 

Almost before the motion had been concluded, Draco’s wand had stabbed into his face again.

“Yes,” he said lowly. “You will.”

It was more painful than any blow Nott could have inflicted, and Harry did not know why. He stared at Draco, forgetting that perhaps he had to speak, that there might be words that would prolong his life. There was just dark, tumultuous grey and pale skin. 

“Why are you doing this?” Harry croaked out.

Draco’s mouth tightened. It was the only sign that Harry’s words had upset him. “Because it has to be done,” he answered briskly. He stepped away from Harry again and the moment snapped apart, leaving nothing but forlorn, chilly air. “Because you make it simple.”

It didn’t make sense to Harry. He understood the words, but there was something wrong with them and he couldn’t make sense of that either. All he could do was look at Draco mutely. His throat tasted as sour as bile. He hadn’t felt so helpless in years. Not since the war, not since the night Dumbledore had been killed.

Draco’s face seemed to be undergoing some play of emotions, but they were tucked very deeply beneath whatever was now on top. He put more space between the two of them, tucking Harry’s wand into the back pocket of his trousers as he did so. For the first time, Harry noticed that Draco wasn’t wearing a cloak. It hit him hard: Draco had just come from his home, there was no need to travel. Harry had let him into the Ministry from his home, and it was as if Draco did this everyday, hells, he _did_ do this everyday, they met almost everyday. Draco was wearing a light blue long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his elbows, and black trousers. Neat black shoes. He looked so comfortable. 

Harry swallowed down what tried to come up.

Something hurt in his chest, as if he’d breathed too deeply and couldn’t let the air out quickly enough. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from Draco, and all he could see was the passive half-profile, the thinned lips and hard grey eyes. He didn’t even recognise the other man, and that… that was the most frightening part. 

The Auror part of his brain tried to think. He couldn’t overpower both of them with wandless magic. It was too raw, and it sapped far too much energy. He’d be blasted backwards before he could even gather the magic properly. They’d feel it the instant they… the instant he…

Gods. Draco had done this. To him. 

He couldn’t begin to figure out why.

“We’ll be taking that, of course.” Nott was pointing lazily at Draco’s back pocket where Harry’s wand stuck out. “It’s so difficult to part with one’s wand. I’ve had to let mine go on several occasions. As you fucking Aurors well know. I’d like that to stop.”

Harry’s teeth hurt from clenching. He blinked rapidly, trying to see anything, any way out of this. But nothing was presenting itself, and he no longer had control of his wand, and what did that mean in the overall scheme of things anyway? As if the bigger picture of Elder Wands even mattered here, now, but that was where Harry’s mind went, attempting to distract itself.

“You deserved to have your wand taken,” Harry muttered.

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely.” What was he trying to do, distract them, too? What would that accomplish? Ginny knew he was working late. No one else would be here until morning, and Harry was sure that whatever Nott and Draco wanted him to do would be done by that time, one way or the other. No one was going to be looking for him for a few hours. 

And it was clear that Nott didn’t plan to be here that long. “The way I see it,” the man said, “we’ve business to attend to, and I’d like to be finished with it. I’m sure you do as well. Draco told me you are so thorough.”

Harry bit back the outrage that threatened. He ground his teeth in silence, and watched helplessly as Nott thumbed through his own folder, humming interestedly and clicking his tongue as he did. Draco did not move; he just held the wand to Harry’s face.

Imperius perhaps? But Harry knew those signs, and Draco’s eyes were very clear. His voice was right, his… his tone. The chilliness was different, so very different, but even that was recognisable, though Harry had not seen it in nearly eight years. And there was something that was still Draco under all that, still fearful and still determined, and no amount of Imperius could fake that level of urgency.

“How…” Harry cleared his throat. “How are you planning to get away?”

Nott glanced up, then tilted his head in Draco’s direction. “That’s up to him, isn’t it?”

Draco’s face tightened again. Harry stared at him.

“You’re going to help him.”

A stiff nod was all he got.

Harry tried his best to ignore the growing hole in his chest. “Draco.” He licked his lips. “You don’t have to do this.”

Draco’s face went even paler, his lips almost white. His hand shook just a fraction, and it reminded Harry perversely of that moment on the castle top under sickly green light, when another man almost managed to talk himself out of death. 

“I do,” Draco whispered. “I do have to.”

_“Why?”_

Draco almost answered, Harry was sure of it. But then his eyes flicked toward the third person in the room, and he sank back under some weight. Back into the cold sullenness he’d worn since he’d arrived. It was so unfamiliar, and yet all too familiar, from a much longer time ago. “Harry, just… just do what he says. You don’t know what he’s capable of. It will go easier if you don’t argue.”

Draco really expected him not to fight? But what could he do? Harry became aware yet again that there was nothing. He didn’t know what Nott was capable of, that was true, and now he didn’t have his wand. He had no way of warning Ginny, and he had no idea what that warning should be. If Nott already had some sort of magic at work, if he’d planned ahead as he’d obviously planned for this— The thought was so devastating that Harry almost choked. There were things a person could do with a potion, with a spell, with a tiny bit of someone else’s hair. Hermione had proven that often enough, hadn’t she? And it was improbable that Nott had come into contact with anyone in his family, but not impossible. Not impossible.

Nott finally lifted his own wand again and held it over the folder. He tapped the corner of the pages thoughtfully and Harry winced. 

“You know,” Nott said, “I’ve a mind to just burn it. I doubt they could reconstruct what they need.”

“They’ll know your signature,” Harry said, desperate. “Your magic. And I sure as hell won’t do it for you.”

It was stupid, he knew. And they obviously knew. All they had to do was use his wand. Even if he weren’t the one wielding it, the magic would show he’d been involved somehow. Nott set the folder down on one of the low tables that lined the rows of shelves. He took one page out and held it up. Tapped his wand too quickly for eyes to follow, and the paper burst into white flame. It vanished before Harry could rightly catch his breath.

Nott did the same for two more papers. And then he held out his hand to Draco. 

“What are you doing?” Harry rasped.

“Ruining your life,” Nott said softly.

Harry lurched forward, but Nott’s wand snapped up and fixed on him as well. “Don’t move, Potter.”

Harry froze, breathing hard, and watched as Nott gestured to Draco with his free hand. “Give it here.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed alarmingly. It was the first sign of the life Harry truly recognised. He glared at Nott. “You’ve got what you came for.”

Nott strode forward so quickly that Draco actually jumped back a step. “Give it to me.”

There was definite warning in his tone, something deadly and dark. Draco swallowed, his face growing whiter. But he made no move to retrieve Harry’s wand. Finally, Nott walked the final few steps, reached around him, and took it right out of his pocket. Draco still didn’t move; his shoulders rose and fell in unsteady jerks. Nott stepped back to where the folder lay and picked out another piece of parchment. 

“That can stay, I think. I’d like to be remembered for something.” He pulled out another. Harry wished hopelessly that the magic wouldn’t function; his wand hadn’t been won off of Draco, it wouldn’t work properly for Nott. But he knew it didn’t have to work properly. It just had to work.

And it did, sparking fitfully and reducing the parchment to cinders.

They stayed only until Nott was satisfied, Draco with his wand held on Harry, Nott dipping into his folder on whim after whim and partitioning out what he wanted destroyed. Every time Harry’s wand flared in the man’s hand, Harry felt another piece of himself fall into the pit that was growing inside him.

Draco’s eyes remained fixed and hard, and perhaps… perhaps that was what pierced deepest.

* * *

_FALLEN HERO_

_by Rita Skeeter_

_The Wizarding world will be watching in shock and awe as its celebrated war hero Harry James Potter, only son of Lily and James Potter of Godric’s Hollow, faces inquisition by the Wizengamot and probable termination of employment._

_In a scandalous revelation this weekend, it has been asserted that Potter, who has worked as an Auror at the Ministry of Magic since completing official training four years ago, has been using his position to flout and break the laws he was trained to uphold. Not new to Harry Potter, you might say, and certainly, this reporter knows well his tendency to sidestep the rules in his quest for what is right. But clearly the former Boy Hero of the Second War has diverged onto a darker, more unsavoury path._

_In direct violation of Statute 15A of the recently lauded Travel Regulations Bill, Potter has been secretly assisting travel-restricted individuals in fleeing the country, using his position and weight in the Auror department to obtain the necessary documents. It is unclear where and how he was in contact with these individuals, but names of fugitives are already surfacing, including suspected Death Eater sympathisers Blaise Zabini and Pansy Parkinson. The worst, however, is not only the illegal deportation of, but the partial destruction of criminal records for Theodore Nott, a known former Death Eater and suspected criminal._

_The Wizengamot convenes on this very matter today, and is expected to hold session for as long as two weeks as they decide how best to reprimand Potter for this latest indiscretion. But one must wonder: what does Ginny Weasley-Potter think of her wayward husband? And what of their two small children?_

 

~tbc~


	4. Two of Wands

_And now, you hold the Two of Wands, and your future, in your hands. Walk within it, choose your paths, and do not hide from what you find inside you. That cannot be escaped, but it can be embraced. Trust me, child, and you will find me, the Magician, in your hand._

 

It did not feel like his own life. 

The suspension had not been a surprise; the real scars Harry nursed now were the ones carved by the look on Kingsley Shacklebolt’s face when he had ordered that suspension. Harry had never wanted so desperately to take something back. Gone were the notions of how right his actions had been in the beginning; all that was left was a chill lodged in his chest, and a sense of numbness pervading his body. When he looked around, it was as if he were seeing the punishment of someone else.

His memories of the Wizengamot were dark, lurid images: cold faces and wide eyes staring at him from the shadows, hushed voices asking questions that pricked, the clenched jaws of his friends sitting in the audience. He could remember Ginny holding James outside the dungeon-like chamber, and for once the little boy was making no sound, but instead had his hand in his mouth and his head as close to his mother’s body as he could get.

Harry remembered looking away.

He was lucky not to lose his job. And no one else reasserted that fact for him. It was as if everyone had been shushed by the sheer weight of what he’d done, as if they were not yet sure if it was real. The truth was, Harry knew, that anyone else would have been sacked immediately. He had no idea who had spoken up for him, or if anyone had. Or if they were cushioning him again with his past. It made his face burn and his heart wither until he had to shake the idea out of his head or else succumb to it completely.

The presence of his magic in the dealings with Nott was irrefutable, even if it was obvious he had not been the one using his wand. The very fact that he’d taken down the wards outside his office, that he’d let a suspected criminal through the door into the outer rooms of the Ministry, was enough to cast every doubt. Who was to say he hadn’t been in league with Theodore Nott, one member of the Wizengamot had asserted, her large eyes squinting directly at him. And Harry had seen the nods from the others, heard the murmurs from the rest.

What he regretted most was that Ginny had heard all from where she sat in the front row, their sons safely outside in their grandmother’s arms. A close second was the confused looks on Hermione and Ron’s faces as they sat there beside his wife.

Minster Ackworth had not attempted to keep the trial private; day after day went by with reporters in the audience section, and Harry knew that it was being pasted all over the newspapers. He avoided the papers whenever he could, and seeing as he was practically on house arrest, there was nowhere else to get them but his front table.

The hardest part was the third day, when the question was finally asked in an attempt to vindicate him: Who was he helping? Who had turned his head from his duties?

It wasn’t as if he’d planned it. But when the time arrived, Harry couldn’t say Draco’s name.

His nights had been sleepless ever since that night in the Ministry: he could see nothing but the stoniness of Draco’s face in his mind, on the dark walls of his house, on the ceiling above the bed where he tossed and turned. Draco’s features were lined in the red of his anger.

There were times when the anger wore him out, and then he would just lie there staring upward, unable to feel anything but utter loss. His mind told him feebly that he was being ridiculous, but all Harry could think then was that he’d lost… everything.

Draco had betrayed him. Used him. Completely. The worst part was that he’d not been expecting it, he’d walked right into it like a child. But he’d been so sure. So certain he had nothing to fear.

There was no way to avoid the discovery of Zabini and Parkinson’s involvement, and that of the others. And Harry knew as soon as Daphne Greengrass’ name came up on the third day that Draco would be facing suspicion at least. But if there was anything Draco Malfoy knew how to do, Harry thought bitterly, it was avoid detection. He’d managed to hide his true self from Harry successfully for months.

It was a sour, sour thought. But Harry couldn’t help thinking it, that none of it had been real. And what else was there to think? 

Surely he, Harry Potter, had not done something so stupid as walk right into a trap. Surely he was smarter than that.

It was a strange and surprising relief he felt, however, to know that the Aurors did not have enough on Parkinson and Zabini and Greengrass to truly bring them back if they did not want to be found. He suspected they would be found eventually, or return on their own out of some sense of unbearable nostalgia. But compared to Theodore Nott, their records were nearly sparkling. He doubted much effort would be put into their recapture when there were worse people out there.

The fact that the Wizengamot spoke of “recapture” should have made him feel indignant, and worse, worried about bigger issues. But he couldn’t feel much of anything beyond himself. He would have to let Hermione handle the rest, again.

* * *

The last day had to arrive at some point, and it did, with the verdict of demotion. Which was hardly what Harry had expected, but he couldn’t be energetic enough to feel more than acceptance. It was a favour, he knew it. Everyone knew it. There were still few who wanted to disgrace the Boy Who Lived utterly. He would have to tack on a year or two more to reach the level where he’d been, but next to a possible prison sentence, it was astonishingly kind. Ginny’s relief was vocal, and teary. Hermione squeezed his arm, and Ron related his ‘knew they couldn’t bring you down’s and the like to Harry’s unhearing ears.

He went home to a house he was no longer bound to, with a probation hanging over him, and nothing but the need to sleep for days, it felt. Just until his head cleared; he was sure that if he just rested, let himself sort through it in his dreams, he would feel better.

He was wrong.

* * *

 _This isn’t a good idea,_ Draco said, and the wind blew his hair as it ruffled the books on their shelves.

 _He’s paying you, isn’t he?_ Harry asked, and Draco turned around, and turned around again, and there were three wands in his hands.

 _You make it so easy._ Draco’s eyes went black, but his mouth opened, lips parting, and he leaned forward. _It will go easier if you don’t argue._

 _You don’t have to do it,_ Harry whispered, and heard his voice like a tolling bell. Draco leaned forward, his face inches away.

_Yes, I do._

Harry woke with a start, covered in sweat, to find moonlight shining into the room, flooding the floor with white light.

* * *

“Have you eaten anything today?”

Ginny’s hand was a warm touch against his back, but Harry couldn’t face the idea of meeting her eyes. He stared at the wall, not feeling the bed beneath him, knowing she was sitting there next to him, but unable to respond vocally. There was too much else waiting to come out.

“I’ve made you a sandwich,” his wife said softly. “If you’re feeling better.”

Harry shook his head. He wrapped his hands around his pillow and just squeezed. There was nothing else to do, nowhere else for it to go. Just out. And there seemed to be so much more right behind it, sadness and more sadness, and helplessness on top of it all.

“Should go for a walk. It’s a nice day today. Relatively speaking.”

He knew he no longer had to stay in. But the thought of going outside felt repulsive and tiring. The thought of being stared at again, when he could barely even look at himself…

Ginny was quiet for a moment, but her hand rubbed small strokes against his shoulders. Until finally it eased to a stop and he felt her lean over him. “Harry, what _is_ it? It’s been three weeks. What’s wrong? Please tell me. Talk to me.”

Her voice wilted as she spoke, worry infiltrating further on every word. Harry shut his eyes and saw Draco again, and nearly moaned. He shook himself and felt her hand lift. But she did not get up.

“You did the right thing, Harry,” she whispered, very close to his ear. “You were doing the right thing. I know you were, everyone knows you were. You should hear them talking, all the opinion columnists.”

Godric, how could he talk to her about this? Part of him was so ashamed of it he felt sick. How in the world could he have allowed this to happen, if it was what he was beginning to sense it was? How could he be such a pathetic, pathetic person? And how could he hate a person so damn much when he also… didn’t hate that person? 

But he did. There was so much anger left to chew at his innards. There was just something else there, chewing alongside it.

* * *

Thunder grumbled outside the house. The heavy air permeated the room, dragging the rain smell along with it. Hermione lifted her cup of tea and sniffed. “I really wish you’d said something to me. Told me what you were doing.”

Harry looked up at her and then back down at the table. “I thought about it. But I didn’t know if you would… break the rules.”

It was depressing when she didn’t answer right away, didn’t quench his foolish fears with an outraged burst of loyalty and righteousness. Hermione’s face looked especially troubled as he sipped her tea. 

“Harry, I would have wanted to know. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You wouldn’t have helped me, then.”

“Oh, I don’t know what I would have done!” she sighed. “There’s a lot to think about. But… I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

Harry nodded under her searching gaze, and Hermione sighed and grimaced. 

“I _should_ have helped you. Alright? I know that. Whatever else.”

It should have been comforting. And it was, but not as comforting as Harry would have liked.

She was still looking at him. “Why now?” she asked at last.

“What?”

“Was it because of what I said?”

Harry shook his head, puzzled, and his friend’s mouth thinned. 

“You know. How I said I’d give anything. That I wanted the law to be…” she cleared her throat and shrugged. “We’ve been battling this thing for almost a year. Paperwork, paperwork. And now you suddenly decide to take physical action. I just wondered…” Her shoulders lifted again.

Harry felt himself blush and fiddled with the handle of the sugar spoon. “Just seemed like the right thing to do,” he muttered.

* * *

_“It seems there is some sense in the world at least. Could we have honestly thrown him in Azkaban when he was only doing what he’s always done, fighting for those whose rights have been taken away?”_

_“You’re missing the bigger picture here. There are laws, important laws that must be upheld! How is our society to function when those who are meant to uphold those laws don’t even—”_

_“And how are we to function when the lawmakers are corrupt? Answer that, why don’t you?”_

“You should listen to this.” Ginny stood in the doorway of the kitchen, cleaning her hands on a towel. Her expression was tentative. The voices from the Wizarding wireless droned on behind her. Over them was the sound of James tossing his utensils on the floor along with his food. Harry got up from the couch wearily. “Think I’ll head for bed,” he murmured.

“You’re not going to wait for dinner?”

He smiled weakly at her, but couldn’t hold it. “I’m not hungry, I’m sorry.”

She didn’t speak, and he wandered up the stairs on bare feet, feeling cold and tired. He just wanted silence in his head for once. On his way to the bedroom, he looked in on Albus, whose soft snores were as calming as anything could be, and then entered his room, fell on the bed, and fell asleep.

* * *

Harry began to look for Draco.

Not in person. Not even he could imagine seeing the man and not hexing his head right off his body. The very thought of him sent the anger boiling within seconds. But it was all the worse because of the vacancy underneath; what should have been pure was flowing through with something even deeper and more painful.

He began picking up the papers again, and glancing through them. First it was just a peek at the front page, and then a sigh of frustration when he found nothing but himself there. But then it grew to leafing through the various sections. Turning to the back for the smaller stories. 

He came across pictures every so often as the weeks passed. Astoria Malfoy never looked happy, and Harry could only stare at Draco’s photograph for so long before he had to put the paper down. But it was again an unlooked for relief to see that Scorpius looked more lively. Some small comfort.

It felt familiar, in a dull, unappealing way, what he was doing. Obsessive, like during his sixth year. Like peering through somebody’s fence or following someone down the street. Whatever scandal might have been tipped by the discovery of Daphne Greengrass’ escape, it never broke the surface enough to cause a wreckage. Draco Malfoy’s family was targeted purely out of a need for human interest stories. The social meanderings of today’s former fallen.

Harry felt like something was building in his chest, solid and ticking, and soon to explode.

* * *

The day when he could no longer hold it in, Harry got up later than usual. His sleep had been silent, dark and memory-less. The jittering inside him had calmed, however, sometime during the night, and he knew that today was the day he would speak, even if he wasn’t sure when. 

The boys were set to go visit Ron and Hermione after lunch, and Harry couldn’t have asked for a nicer blessing than a quiet house with Ginny home. No distractions to take his mind off of what he wanted to do, except for the ever-present distraction he’d had for months, of course. But that was the whole point.

He spent the early afternoon out in the backyard, letting the sunlight beat some heat through his skin. When his nerves became too much, he went back in, and found Ginny in the sitting room trying to mount a portrait of James on the wall. Harry stared at it; his son had only been a few months old when the picture was taken, and he smiled and swung his arms, and blew a raspberry over and over again.

“You busy?” Harry asked.

Ginny looked over at him and then back at the picture. “Not really. Just trying to get this up. I’ve been meaning to do for weeks, but everything’s been so crazy.”

“Yeah.” Harry sighed and sat down on the couch.

Ginny continued with the picture, holding the corners with her fingers and nudging it back and forth as she tried to find the right angle. 

“It was Draco Malfoy,” Harry said, and it did burst from him, as he’d long expected it would. 

“Malfoy?” Ginny said absently. “What was?”

Harry sighed. “The one I was helping. The one I… got in trouble for helping.”

Ginny stopped moving; he could feel it even though he didn’t really see it. She put down the picture and he heard her take a deep breath. And then she came slowly across the room and sat down delicately on the couch. “It was Malfoy helping them get out?”

Harry snorted. “Yes. And me. He… came to me.” It was a little too much to go into how he’d accidentally run across Draco in the midst of his plots. And there wasn’t much use for that part anyway, not anymore. Harry had made the decision to continue on his own, and long ago.

She was trying to figure out how to say whatever she was going to say, he knew it. “Well… Alright. Then he was… doing the right thing, too. Hermione’s right, you know. That law is wrong, no matter what I think of Malfoy.”

It was so funny to hear his own words, or near enough, coming from Ginny’s mouth. Harry tried not to laugh but he couldn’t hold it all in, and it came out as a weird puff of sound that had Ginny raising her eyebrows. 

“Harry, is that what this has been about? You were helping him do the right thing! Alright?” She put her hand on his arm. “The whole time, you were doing what was right, for him. For them. It’s a good reason.”

It made Harry’s stomach twist even more. He looked away from her, suddenly wanting to _be_ away from her. “That’s not… why I was helping him.”

His wife looked blank, and Harry exhaled sharply. “I mean, it was. At first. But then…” He couldn’t say it. He just couldn’t, not to her face like that. He was such a coward. His mind tried to make up for it by snapping at the rest of it. “He turned on me. In the end. He let Nott— He just turned on me.”

He saw Ginny’s hands flex against her knees. Her fingers were shapely, and they curled protectively before relaxing again. “Well… But now you know about him. Okay? It’s not a bad thing to be fooled, Harry. It doesn’t make you less of a person. In fact, it makes you more of a person, I should think. Everyone gets fooled sometimes!”

“Ginny, I wasn’t fooled!” He got up off the couch with a jerk, leaving her sitting behind him, and walked across the room to the window. “I… That wasn’t what happened, alright?”

“Then what did happen? Harry, you’re not making much sense.”

“Look, I was an idiot, alright?” He pulled at his hair, twisting it with his fingers as he paced. “I let down my guard, and he rolled me. They both did.”

“Then tell the Wizengamot, Harry! Why didn’t you say anything at the trial? Merlin, if they knew that he was involved—”

“Ginny, I can’t turn him in!” Harry cried. She stared at him. He felt his face heat, and he turned away. “I can’t do that to him.”

He knew she was struggling. It was a battle she’d been fighting for years, control over her temper. This time she seemed to be winning, because she didn’t cry out as he suspected she wanted to. “Fine,” she said instead. “You’re right, he’s got… It’s best to let it go, I think. Just put it behind you. Behind us.”

And now Harry felt absolutely miserable. “I can’t,” he whispered.

She got up then and came after him, stopping a few feet behind. “ _Harry_. You haven’t done anything wrong. _I_ don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, and Hermione and Ron and Mum and Dad don’t, and who cares what the others think? It’s fine, really—”

“Oh, Gin,” he breathed, “that’s not what I’m talking about.” It felt like he’d tugged a supporting stone loose, and now the mountain was beginning to tremble, the other rocks to slide. If he kept talking, it might just all come out and be done with itself. He turned around to face her at last, and found her frowning.

“Harry, I’m trying to understand, but you’re not being plain.”

He sucked in a breath, the words already on their way out. “I can’t put him behind me.”

Her expression grew puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t…”

He shrugged, the uselessness asserting itself again for a final blow. “I’ve been meeting with him. For days, weeks. He’s… There’s something there, Gin. There’s always been something, but now it’s…”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s what, Harry?”

“I feel…” How to word it? He couldn’t even come up with a decent definition himself. “I need…”

There was a short silence.

“Are you saying you want him?” Her voice was tightly contained; it had an almost empty quality, waiting to be filled.

“I don’t know,” Harry said desperately. “I don’t know.”

“But he betrayed you.” Now her words were beginning to shake. “He turned on you. You trusted him and he turned on you, how could you—”

“Ginny, I didn’t plan it! Gods, you _know_ I didn’t plan it! It just happened, I don’t even remember when exactly, but I can’t… I can’t let it go.”

“The betrayal or the desire?” she said tightly, and Harry wanted to cringe.

“I…” He let the sentence drop because they both knew the answer, or would soon. He wanted to explain that his feelings for her hadn’t changed, but he wasn’t sure of that, he wasn’t sure he could articulate it, and he wasn’t sure of anything at all. And meanwhile he could see her sorting it out in her mind, missing pieces coming into focus.

“So what are you saying?” she said unsteadily. “Did you do anything? Are you having some— some sort of—”

“No, Ginny! No. Merlin, don’t say that. We never— I don’t even know if I could!”

He heard it in his own voice as soon as he spoke, the shift, the touch of wistfulness. Ginny’s pretty face twisted so quickly. “You,” she forced out. “You don’t just want _him_. You want to be with him.”

Harry couldn’t affirm. He couldn’t deny. His power over action had been lost, sucked from him by the look on Ginny’s face.

“More than you want to be with us?” she cried, and it snapped so loudly that Harry jumped. “With me, with our sons?”

 _“No,”_ he breathed, feeling appalled and very, very sick. For one infinitesimal moment, the comparison reared, Draco, or his children, his family, and Draco was so very small beside them. Something inside Harry scoffed, spit at the near betrayal, and then the horror at seeing Draco as so very insignificant began to curdle in Harry’s gut.

Gods. What had he…? What _was_ he, to turn so quickly, to throw aside—

“Well, what do you want, then?” Ginny nearly screamed, tears slipping freely down both of her cheeks. Her skin had whitened beneath her freckles. For some reason, it was all Harry’s eyes could tell him.

He felt himself sliding, everything inside him flowing into mush, and it was a horrid sort of mess that choked at his brain. His throat burned.

“I don’t… know,” he whispered.

Ginny’s hands clenched into fists and released. She drew breath in a wretched hitch. “I have to l-leave,” she choked out between the jerking of her lungs.

“Ginny—” He had to stop, had to swallow. “No.”

“No?” she cried, and spun on him with hands twisted into fists, blue eyes searing. _“No?_ You… selfish, selfish—”

Harry couldn’t look at her. And it didn’t help that the next thing to enter his mind was that he was left completely alone now. He wouldn’t be looking at Draco either, and he wanted to. He wanted…

Godric, he wanted what he knew he shouldn’t, couldn’t, have. He wanted what he already had but was throwing away even now. And the scary part was, he had no idea which one he wanted more.

Ginny trembled in front of him, pure rage seeping into the room around them, and Harry wanted to hide from it. It was cowardly, he’d begun the day stronger than he’d thought possible, able to tell his wife the truth for once, and now he was reduced to incompetence and cowardice. He wanted to cheat on his wife, but he was too much of a fool to want to throw his family aside, and yet here he was doing just that. For Draco Malfoy, who had cut his legs right off even as he stood, and who made his entire chest tighten in ways he hadn’t felt since his first year of marriage. 

He _hated_ Draco. Hated him so much.

The first tear slipped free, and Harry turned his head instinctively to hide it. But he never knew if Ginny saw. He could feel it rolling down his cheek, the cheek she couldn’t see, and it felt like the brush of Draco’s _thumb_ , of all fucking things. Cooler. With a sharper edge.

Ginny was moving, harried steps away from and back toward him. “I’m leaving,” she managed, her voice shaking. “Going to Mum’s. For… I’m just going.”

The last word came out like a last breath of air, and Ginny yanked her cloak free of the chair it was draped over and shoved both her arms into the sleeves, jerking it around herself. Harry watched silently, his voice broken, blinking and blinking because the only thing that wasn’t failing him was his sadness. It all washed up, and Draco was even in that, flooding over and around the dissolution of his marriage, and with it came sorrow that he’d never even known the person he now wanted so badly. He’d never known the Draco he’d desired. Just a creation his own mind had fooled him with, until it was too late.

He heard the door open and shut, and then her footsteps thumping down the porch. The instant the sound died, it became so utterly silent that Harry’s heart constricted. There was no one else here anymore. No one else. He dropped to the couch under its weight, almost missing it, and collapsed into the soft cushions. He thought of his sons at their friends’ home, and didn’t even bother trying to keep anything in anymore.

* * *

Try as he might, he couldn’t remember Malfoy Manor like this. Not in evening twilight with the breeze rustling the combed hedges and standing trees along the front walk. The gravel grated under his shoes as he walked, and he tried to remember that night during the last year of the war, when the Death Eaters had pulled him and his friends up this very front walk and through the doors to be interrogated. But all he could remember clearly was the time spent inside the manor, in the dark rooms with those dark people.

He couldn’t admit to himself what he was there to do. He wasn’t even sure if he knew. But it had tightened inside him, a roiling, ugly thing that pressed in and in, hemmed round with the sharp tang of emptiness. Loss. 

He’d spent nearly a week alone in his house, without another voice, not Ginny’s or his sons’. And he’d been too afraid to go to the Burrow, where he knew his wife was now staying with the children. She hadn’t refused his visits; she hadn’t talked to him at all. But his stomach recoiled at the idea of approaching that house, where the people who had taken him in as a son lived, not even to see his children.

And there was only one thing left to think about, then.

It was inescapable. There was nothing to distract him, nothing to turn his thoughts. Harry could think of nothing but Draco, dream nothing but Draco. How Draco had sought him out, how Draco had turned on him, how Draco had ruined his life. Changed his life. There were so many holes, and they were all digging at him, demanding to be filled with answers, and he couldn’t even begin to deal with any of them. There were two things he knew for certain: that he wanted to talk to Draco, and that he wanted to see Draco. The reasoning was a little vague.

And now here he was, a week short of sleep and walking down the front path of the home belonging to the man he thought he’d known, but maybe he’d never, ever known him, and he didn’t even know what he was going to say when he got inside, but he did intend to get inside.

As it happened, that was not difficult. There were no house elves any longer; Draco answered the door himself, and shocked Harry into muteness before he could go any further.

Draco looked ill, drawn and tired. He stared wordlessly at Harry, one thin hand clutched around the edge of the huge door. The breeze rushed past him into the front hall; Harry heard it whistle as it turned the corner.

“Are you alone?” Harry said shortly. 

Draco blinked. “I… yes.” His head jerked toward the house as if he meant to flee back inside. 

Harry didn’t respond. He walked forward, and Draco backed up with widened eyes, pulling the door wider. Harry didn’t know where he was going. He just followed the hall until he came to a corridor of doors, and opened the first one, revealing a rather nicely furnished den. Except he was certain the Malfoys never called it that. He could hear Draco following him, and realised a little late that the man wasn’t wearing any shoes.

And why should he? Harry was in his home, wasn’t he?

Harry clenched his jaw and headed for one of the big windows. It overlooked a green lawn that led to a large garden full of stately plants and flowers. The colours, blues and pinks and greens and golds, waved in the breeze outside like tufts of stirred light. Harry swallowed and turned around to find that Draco had shut the doors to the room. The man was leaning against them, hands hidden behind on the knobs, and looking down at the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell them?” Draco asked suddenly.

It definitely wasn’t the first thing Harry had expected to hear, but he was ready regardless. “I couldn’t do that to you.”

He spoke it harshly, with intent to injure, and Draco winced appropriately.

“I’d say that I’m sorry,” the man whispered, “but I don’t think you would accept it.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Harry began to pace, as he had in his own house for the last week, this time in front of Draco’s windows and couches and tables. Old wealth that now held only the memory of aristocracy. Draco watched him, tensing whenever Harry got nearer.

“I am, though,” Draco finally said. “Even if it means nothing.”

“Good.”

“Harry,” Draco said, sounding a little desperate. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do it.”

“Take it all back,” Harry snapped. Draco swallowed visibly, but didn’t answer, and it just made Harry more irritated. 

“Fix it all,” he continued, and this time he approached the other man deliberately. Draco held his ground, but Harry could see it was a struggle. “Go back and give me my life back!”

“I’m not sorry I came to you,” Draco tried, and it did almost sound defiant. “And I would. Give it all back. But that’s impossible.”

“Good, I’m glad you see things the same way as I do!”

“You don’t understand,” Draco whispered. “Harry.”

“Don’t call me that!” Harry cried. “Merlin Almighty! You ripped my feet out from under me! You helped him, against me! Tell me, is there anything you wouldn’t do for money now, Malfoy?”

Draco’s shoulders were shaking, unsteady hitches and trembles. His slender frame looked as if it might be cracking.

Harry stared at him. “You’re the one crying,” he stated bitterly, his own eyes burning, filling. The world— Draco’s sheer-blond head— became an undefined glow of auras.

Harry jerked around. Away. Went for the door because he knew it was there. He couldn’t actually see it.

“Harry—” came the ragged voice behind him.

Shouldn’t have stopped. Godric, why was he no longer in control? Shouldn’t stop…

“He was going— to kill Scorpius,” Draco managed thickly.

Harry’s heart shifted in his chest, as if it had tried to beat one too many times. “What?” he whispered. It felt so tiring, too much heaviness all at once.

Draco’s voice shook. “Scorpius wasn’t sick. I mean… he was. But it wasn’t natural. It was Nott’s doing.”

It felt like a wind sucking his air free of his body, and he had no idea where to find more. Harry turned around, struggling with himself. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I should never have helped him!” Draco exploded, and then his body just collapsed, until he very nearly fell. “Salazar, why did I— He was the one, and I didn’t know until— Harry, I tried to stop you.”

“Stop _me?_ ”

“From helping him,” Draco managed, and Harry’s restraints broke again.

“You didn’t try very hard!” he shouted. “Gods, you— How long did you know?”

“I tried!” Draco cried. “Harry, you have no idea what he said. The things he’d prepared for. Everywhere I turned, he had an answer. A wall. I thought if I could just get him out of the country, away from us…”

“So you betrayed me,” Harry seethed. “After you begged me to help you, you turned around and helped him ruin my life! No, no, you ruined it, you did it just as much as he did. Do you know what I’ve been through this last month?”

“Yes!” Draco shouted back. “What did you think, I would just waltz off into the ether? I read everything I could, Harry, I bribed people for information about your trial. I had to know everything that was happening to you!”

“Yeah, so you could sidestep any hexes when they found out about you!” Harry yelled.

 _“No!”_ It was snarled, so angrily that Harry stopped. Draco’s face was red. “I wanted to know what was happening to you! I did this to you, I had to make sure they didn’t— that you weren’t—”

“Hurt? Sacked? Ruined? Draco, you… What were you going to do, come in and save me at the last moment? Sacrifice your name and what’s left of your wealth to come and rescue me? That’s complete shite and you know it!”

“It was the only choice I had!” Draco cried. “Harry, when he was done threatening me and mine, who do you think he threatened next? And don’t you think for a second that I just turned on you. I wasn’t going to help him! Even though Scorpius was—” Draco shuddered. “I told him no, I told him to fuck off. Find someone else. But he knew about you.”

Harry froze, staring at him. “What—?”

“I don’t know, Harry,” Draco breathed, his voice rushing into weariness. “He knew. He knew what we were doing, he knew how I fel— He knew your part in it. And he knew about your kids. Of course. Everyone knows about your kids.”

Harry stared, unable to speak or think.

“I couldn’t let him. Not to you. You don’t know that pain, you should never, _ever_ …” Draco gasped unsteadily and then flung his hand out in a wide arc. “You love your children. Harry, you can’t imagine—”

He couldn’t. He tried, and… he couldn’t. Not really, not for what it was. The death of one of his babies, one of his sons, at the hand of another human being. The slow turning of the clock as he watched sickness wash over his infant son, little by little and relentless as the ocean, and to know… to know that there was indeed something he could do to stop it. 

What wouldn’t he do?

“You didn’t do this for me,” Harry whispered, and Draco stalked forward as if he would slap him.

“ _I did_. You fucking arse, I did! I did it for me, and I did it for your children and mine, and I did it for you! You would have lost your _job_ , Harry! What is that, next to your child?”

“It’s nothing!” Harry yelled. “It’s fucking nothing, you— you bastard—” Harry stopped the words, feeling them plug his throat and grate against his lungs. He wanted to grab Draco and shake him— and— dig his fingernails into his arms and hold him there as tightly as he could, so he couldn’t get away. “You could have told someone!”

“No, I could not,” Draco snarled. “He got my son, Harry. At fucking Hogwarts, he got hold of my son somehow with some magic, and he poisoned him! He made him sick, Harry, just like that, and who could I have told? You? You don’t think he thought of that? That was the first thing he thought of! Harry, he knew our game before we even knew he was in the picture. He knew what was going on, and who was doing it, and exactly how to get what he wanted. He planned for it, don’t you see? I had to take steps to save myself!”

“On your own again, then?” Harry growled. “Always on your own, digging through the Room of Requirement _again_ , Malfoy? Just like before?”

“Don’t you dare,” Draco whispered, but it was sharp and furious, and scared. “Don’t you dare compare that to this!”

“It’s exactly like this! It’s exactly fucking like it! You are such a complete arse, Draco, you think it’s all about you, you think you can do it all on your own! You drop other people’s lives into the cauldron like they’re nothing! And when someone gets in your way, you walk right over them, just like Dumbledore—”

“You _are_ a bastard, Harry.” Draco’s voice trembled. His eyes glimmered with tears. “You are such a fucking bastard.”

“You should have told someone!” Harry could feel the unfairness ringing through him, the impossibility, the paradox of the situation, the horrible things he was shoving into the air between them, but it was as if he couldn’t stop. It was all clambering to get out, to some unknown end.

“Who would have believed me?” Draco cried frenziedly. “Who the fuck would have believed, or cared about me?”

“I would have!” Harry shouted. It cracked across his heart and broke there, streaming a tear down his cheek. He felt it all flooding, saw Draco’s eyes go wide and injured beyond anything he’d ever seen, and then Draco was moving.

Draco came forward two steps and kissed him, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him in until their mouths met, and forced his lips apart with his tongue. Harry grunted and felt another tear slip loose, and then Draco tilted his head and fit their mouths more closely together. Harry caught Draco’s lower lip between his own and held it until it wasn’t enough, but Draco was already making up for it, kissing his mouth and missing his mouth, and giving tiny, hurting gasps in between. Harry grabbed his upper arm and held on, and Draco slunk against him, a full-bodied sag, very, very warm. 

Draco’s gasps sounded nearly like soft sobs. His hand clutched in Harry’s hair, tight enough to hurt, and Draco was turning his head, plying at his mouth. Harry pushed him back and followed until they bumped together again, Draco hard against the wall and Harry against the front of his body. Harry lapped at Draco’s tongue, desperate for the taste of it, feeling his whole body reach for it, and then pushed back and broke them apart.

For a few seconds, the only sound was their joined gasps. Then Draco lifted his chin and lipped at Harry’s mouth, and it was the broken way he did it that cemented it for Harry, what he not only couldn’t have, but wouldn’t have. 

Not now.

“I can’t,” Harry whispered. Draco nodded miserably and kissed him again. Pulled them together in a fluid movement that felt as if the kiss itself had drained into it. Harry tucked him close, kissed his mouth deeply. Tasted. And pulled away with a sudden, aching motion.

He didn’t look at Draco until he was nearly out of the room. And then he turned because all the warnings in the world would not have been able to stop him, and found Draco staring at him through reddened eyes, breathing through a reddened mouth, wearing a rumpled shirt and hanging his hands dejectedly beside him. It was almost too much. Harry shut his eyes and swallowed the lump down, and though the tears would not go away so easily, he made it through the door and out into the world again.

* * *

_HEROIC SCANDAL PROMPTS RECONSIDERATION OF LAWS_

_by Rita Skeeter_

_It seems wartime vigilantism has not died out as completely as the public would like to believe. In an unprecedented scandal nearly two months ago, Harry Potter, former Wizarding saviour and war hero, betrayed the entire Auror corps by not only flouting the very laws he is bound to uphold, but by smuggling suspected criminals out of the country against those laws. But the story, appearing so complete just two months prior, proves to be only the beginning of the uproar._

_Supporters of last year’s Travel Regulations Bill are finding themselves hard-pressed to battle the increasing fervour from the other side of the fence. Potter’s recent erratic and unthinking behaviour, so unfairly punished by a mere demotion, has changed the mind of the Wizarding public regarding a law that appears to be faulty and un-judicial. This reporter has not drawn her own conclusions as of yet, but suffice it to say that public outcry has far exceeded what it has been in the past twelve months._

_“What can I say? It’s definitely time for a change,” sniffs Hermione Granger, friend and confidante of Potter. Granger is also known to be in fervent opposition to the Travel Regulations Bill, and has been seeking to undermine its effectiveness from its very institution. Sadly, if she has her way, the public might just do her work for her and dismantle the very laws that keep us and our children safe, one by one. One can only weep at what the Wizarding world has come to…_

* * *

The house was full of blue afternoon light. Harry tried to step through the door, but his feet wouldn’t agree to it, and eventually he gave up and locked himself back out. Stared at the skyline with its peaked roofs and little chimneys. And went around back to the yard behind, picturing a lopsided house with too many additions.

His Apparition went by almost without him noticing, and when he knocked on the door, he felt the rush of foreboding, the guilt and the certainty of being turned away.

It was Molly who opened the door.

She looked at him for a few seconds, and then slowly pushed the door wider. “She’s upstairs, Harry. If you’d like, I can make you both some tea.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, rolling in the stillness. “Thank you, Molly,” he murmured at last. She gave him a small smile and reached out for his hand.

“It’s alright. It’s alright to come in, dear.” 

He had no idea what she knew, or what she thought she knew. What Ginny had said and what she’d kept secret. Part of him longed to tell Molly, spill it right out just so that it was no longer concealed and everyone was on even footing again. He felt like he’d been on uneven ground for a very long time.

Molly led him toward the kitchen and glanced up the stairs as she passed them. Harry followed her gaze. The first landing was lit, the floors above lost in shadows. The house sounded so empty and Harry felt a lingering wash of sadness for Molly and Arthur. 

“Go up,” came his mother-in-law’s voice from in front of him. “Go on. Tea will be here if you want it.”

Harry summoned what thank yous he could manage, and then turned and headed up the first flight of stairs. When he reached the first level, Harry headed down the hall on slow feet, uncertain whether he really wanted to be here, and whether he had any right anymore.

He heard movement in the second bedroom on the left, and stopped outside the door, raising his hand and then not moving for some time. Finally letting his fist fall to knock gently on the door.

“Mum?” Ginny’s voice said from inside.

“No,” Harry managed, “no, it’s me. It’s Harry.”

There was no sound for several seconds. Harry was just about to let himself turn away and escape back downstairs when the door clicked open, revealing Ginny with her hair up in a loose bun, dressed in bedtime clothing. She looked him over, and then motioned him in without meeting his eyes again.

The room was lit well, and decorated tastefully with springtime colours. But it was definitely a guestroom; there was little of Ginny there save for the clothing she wore and the bag settled by the door. He wasn’t sure when she’d picked that up from home, but she had at some point when he’d been out. 

He glanced at the bed, then at Ginny, and she nodded once. Harry turned and sat, right on the edge, feeling very uncomfortable. He had no idea how to begin this conversation and no idea what he might be expected to say during it. And his throat felt very swollen suddenly. It was the smell of the house and all the memories. And everything else on top of it.

Ginny came slowly around the bed and stopped a few feet from him. All he could see were her bare feet and long, elegant toes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. It sounded so helpless. Harry choked out a sob that wouldn’t be held in check. She wavered, and his arm came up, and then she was curled in it, tucking his head against her side and threading fingers into his hair. He clutched her close, breathing in the smell of her. She stroked his head gently. And they sat like that, swaying just a bit, and the house was completely silent.

“I’m not ready to come back,” she whispered at last. “I just… I can’t.”

Can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop imagining. Can’t stop mistrusting. They paraded through Harry’s mind in a dirge, and the lowest, most deadly silent part of it was the moment when he realised he didn’t, and couldn’t, blame her. He’d been kissing a man. He had intimate feelings for another person, and it wasn’t his wife. And… as much as he regretted about the way everything had ended up going, he didn’t regret those feelings. Or those kisses. 

He didn’t regret Draco.

“I know,” he whispered back. She pulled away reluctantly, her arms sliding against his shoulders, and he longed to trap their warmth in his own and hold them there and pretend, Merlin, pretend none of this mess had ever happened.

But there was a significant and growing part of him that fought desperately at the idea of sacrificing Draco.

“But we’ll talk,” she went on in a shaking voice. “We’ll sort this out, one way or another.”

Harry looked at her carefully, and saw in her eyes that she was expecting sorrow just as much as she was hoping for joy. She wasn’t sure how it would turn out. And she’d resigned herself against forcing it. Harry wasn’t sure whether to despair or be grateful.

“Are you…” She bit her lip. “What I mean is, have you seen…”

Had he seen Draco? Had he been with Draco? He couldn’t imagine asking the questions himself, and she was trying, and expecting him to say yes, yes, he’d slept with Draco, there, it was done.

He met her eyes and saw her quail. “No, wait,” she muttered. “I don’t…”

“Gin,” he sighed, and then he was in her position. How to explain to one he loved about another he loved? How to confess to something he didn’t feel he should be ashamed of, and yet knowing by all the statutes of their marriage that he should be terribly appalled?

“I’ve seen him,” he said at last.

“Oh,” she whispered. She nodded once, slowly. “Oh.”

What was the use of details? She would only believe him if she wanted to, if she felt he deserved it. Harry gazed at her, and remembered a kiss against a wall and blond hair between his fingers, and needing, just… needing again.

“When we sort it, I don’t know what it will be,” he said softly, and she raised her hand to her hair and tugged her fingers through it, a nervous, angry reaction. It was the only hint he got of any lingering rage.

“You do what you need to do, Harry,” she grated, but still it was not confrontational. She sighed. “We need to be away from each other, at any rate. I can’t… look at you. Sometimes. And I can’t love you when that happens.”

 _I love you no matter what,_ Harry thought. But she wasn’t the only one he… loved. And it was different, so different. He wanted— Founders, how could he want two so very different people so much?

“So,” she said, pulling away and rubbing the back of her hand under her nose. She looked so young and injured. Harry hated himself for causing it. “I’m not taking your children. I’m not taking them away, I mean.”

Harry felt something release inside his chest. He almost cried. “Thank you,” he wavered. 

She shook her head, her mouth turning down abruptly. “I can’t. Okay? I can’t do that. Not even if you and he—”

And she left the sentence open. Harry swallowed.

“A few months,” she said, and her voice shook even more. “No questions from me, and none from you. And we’ll see where we are. After.”

He had a good idea of where she expected him to be during those few months. With whom. But he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. It was all hurting his head and he just wanted to sigh and stop and think, and not try to see the future.

He wanted to see his sons.

“A few months,” he whispered, nodding. Her eyes caught his and held them. And she nodded back once.

“Okay.”

* * *

He’d expected talk at work. Chatters, some whispers. And he was sure there was some of that, but his coworkers were pretty good at hiding it; he was hard-pressed to catch anyone in the midst of a conversation about him, and he was very glad of that. He thought about himself enough; he didn’t need all of them doing it, too. 

He’d been moved from his old office, relocated to another floor, in a less protected department of Aurors. The offices there were roomy and bright, each with a window to the false outside. There were no wards humming about the place, no terribly sensitive files, and the other people there were bright and cheerful, and welcoming. That had been surprising; what hadn’t surprised him was that the office area was smaller, with fewer Aurors at work. They dealt with the less urgent things, the paperwork and the little everyday to-dos of the business with which the other Aurors felt they needn’t have bothered. For Harry, who had managed some of those smaller details even at the upper levels, it was a relief to feel like he was in company with others, finally. People who worried about the little things.

The woman next door to him had popped out for lunch; Marion something, Harry wasn’t sure of her last name. He did remember that she was Muggle-born, that she’d walked him to his office the first day, and after setting him up with the appropriate furnishings and giving him a short tour of their workplace, had proceeded to tell him that ‘whatever anyone else says, you were in the right. That law is a faulty bit of wiring that needs fixing.’

It had been an okay week, for the most part. 

Harry perused the contents of a Muggle-Wizarding Interaction Bill that was due for some fixing as well, one hand settled idly on a mug of coffee he’d charmed to stay hot. It was a poor lunch, but he still wasn’t feeling all that hungry, and there were worse things than coffee. He heard the main door open, a small sound in the back of his consciousness, and then footsteps heading down the hall. The knock on his open door a few seconds later brought his head up.

He looked up, and Draco stood in his doorway, leaning against it with shoulders curled forward. His grey eyes darted, then held. Immediately Harry recalled the taste of the other man’s mouth. It stung, deep and yearning in his chest.

“Hi,” he said softly.

Draco gazed at him. His hands were in the pockets of his trousers, casual and unsteady at the same time. He wavered for an instant, then pushed away from the door and entered the office. He moved to stand right in front of Harry, close enough for Harry to smell the scent of his clothing. One pale hand came up and cradled Harry’s cheek.

“Hey,” Draco whispered.

 

~fin~


End file.
